Lok Sabha Elections 2024: NCP (SP), BJP to fight it out in Maharashtra's Madha

Solapur/Satara: The rumblings within the Pawar family in Baramati are being heard and felt in the adjoining Lok Sabha constituency of Madha.

Credit: DH Graphic

Spread over the Solapur and Satara districts of Western Maharashtra, the Madha seat adjoins the Baramati Lok Sabha seat, which falls in the Pune district. The politics in Madha has an influence on the Pawar family.

In Madha, the fight is between sitting BJP MP Ranjitsinh Naik-Nimbalkar and Dhariyasheel Mohite-Patil of the Sharad Pawar-led NCP (SP).

Ranjitsinh Naik-Nimbalkar hails from the erstwhile royal family of Phaltan, while Dhariyasheel Mohite-Patil hails from the influential Mohite-Patil political family of Akluj.

This constituency was created during the 2008 delimitation, and in the first-ever Lok Sabha polls in 2009, in this seat, Sharad Pawar, the NCP supremo, won the seat as he gave the Baramati family seat to Supriya Sule. Sharad Pawar defeated Subhash Deshmukh of the BJP, while Mahadev Jankar of Rashtriya Samaj Paksha came in third. 

Ahead of the 2014 polls, Sharad Pawar announced that he would not contest Lok Sabha elections and preferred to get elected from Rajya Sabha. In 2014, his close aide Vijaysinh Mohite-Patil won the seat when he defeated Sadabhau Khot of Swabhimani Paksha, who was backed by the BJP when the Narendra Modi wave swept the state. 

In 2019, BJP fielded Ranjitsinh Naik-Nimbalkar, who defeated Sanjaymama Shinde of NCP. 

Things changed in between as the Mohite-Patil family aligned with the BJP and former deputy chief minister Vijaysinh Mohite-Patil’s son, Ranjitsinh Mohite-Patil, was made a BJP MLC. 

However, Vijaysinh Mohite-Patil's nephew Dhariyasheel Mohite-Patil, a former Solapur Zilla Parishad member, joined the NCP (SP) and was given a ticket to contest. 

One of the important factors in this seat is that it has a significant Dhangar population. That's why Pawar was insisting that Jankar, a Dhangar leader, contest for Maha Vikas Aghadi (I.N.D.I.A), however, at the last minute, he backed out and went to the MahaYuti (NDA) camp and the RSP chief was given the Parbhani seat from the quota of Ajit Pawar-led NCP. Parbhani is another seat where Dhangars are the deciding factor.

After Jankar backed out, Dhariyasheel Mohite-Patil was the natural choice. Before that, Pawar held extensive discussions with his uncle Vijaysinh Mohite-Patil and senior Congress leader and former chief minister Sushilkumar Shinde. 

“A lot of water has flown under the bridge in the last decade and there have been a lot of alignments and realignments. There are several issues, like drought and water crisis. This seat is surely going for a photo finish. The margin won’t be big,” said Prakash Patil, a resident of Madha.