Baramati residents: We want no one but the Pawars

Baramati is the Bharatiya Janata Partys BJP new lab Having cracked the formula of winning several important seats in the Nationalist Congress Partys NCP fiefdom of western Maharashtra a victory in the personal stronghold of the Pawar family has eluded the ruling partyBJPs experiment went for a toss in the Lok Sabha polls when NCP boss Sharad Pawars daughter Supriya Sule retained her seat with elan In the impending Assembly elections the BJPs game plan may not guarantee success against the indomitable Ajit Pawar but it should keep incubating the partys hopes for a miracle in the futureBJP workers at the party headquarters at BaramatiThe Pawars havent conceded their Parliamentary or Assembly seats ever since the family entered the electoral fray here 50 years ago The BJPs recognition appears so weak in this superrich town that one has to make repeated inquiries to find its local officeProsperity displays its colours very vividly here No other semiurban centre of Baramatis rank or population in the country is likely to have the number of showrooms of highend automobiles that this town has Infrastructure is at par with Agrade citiesNCP workers at the party headquarters in the same constituencyThe courses on offer in educational institutes are top class The industry performs better than in other places and all agriculturerelated research centres are here Sugarcane farming runs the economy The cooperatives are still in better shape The town has exclusive rail connectivity with Pune which is unparalleled for a tehsilThe BJP says this is where it has found a flaw in the Pawars policies that have made certain people rich while others still have to fight for basic needs It blames the social economic and political imbalance on Baramatis first familyAn autorickshaw promoting the NCP PicsPradeep DhivarFor Pawars the Baramati town is everything You dont see a semblance of Baramati in other parts of the tehsil or western Maharashtra a city which they think is their jaagir said Avinash Mote BJP incharge in the constituency and Pune District BJPs general secretaryUndoubtedly Baramarti does not have a leader to match the stature of Sharad Pawar and nephew Ajit who have been winning elections without taking part in the party campaign They submit nominations and leave to campaign in the rest of the state Ajit will appear in Baramati only on October 19Shaheen ShaikhThe void in leadership in its ranks made the BJP field an outsider in the 2014 and in this years Assembly election It pitted a local a relative of the Pawars in this years Lok Sabha polls but failed on both occasionsThe outcome of the two results established that an outsider with considerable clout in some communities such as the Dhangars can do better against the Pawars So Gopichand Padalkar a Sanglikar who had revolted against the NCP during this years Lok Sabha polls has been wooed to contest against Ajit In the 2014 Lok Sabha another Dhangar leader Mahadev Jankar had given Sule a tough fightYasmeen Shaikh district vicepresident BJPs Women CellPadalkar is sacrificial lambNCPs Baramati taluka president Sambhaji Holkar who handles Ajits campaign said that the outsiders candidature was nothing short of an attempt to create social disharmony in the happygolucky BaramatiBJP says Padalkar is a tiger If so why didnt the party field him from a safe constituency like Chandrakant Patils state BJP president from Kolhapur who is contesting from Kothrud in Pune Padalkar doesnt know he is being made a sacrificial lamb He shall loose and be discarded like a flea in a teacup said Kiran Tawre NCPs former taluka presidentApolitical locals also feel the same way Vishwanath Keskar a resident of Gunavadi said the BJP should have a local candidate Waiting for Padalkars arrival in his village on the outskirts of Baramati he said he had come just to count the audience because a handful of people would turn up for the meetingHanuman Lakde of the Dhangar Samaj Sanghana that supports Ajit said that the community will send Padalkar packing to Sangli BJP should get maximum 25000 votes out of the 342 lakh We will ensure that Ajit dada wins at least by 150 lakh votes which should be the highest winning margin in the stateMahendra Kharat a ward boy at a private hospital said he got a decent job because of the policy of the Pawars who encouraged doctors to set up stateoftheart hospitals My wife also works and we make a good living he saidMuslim women power BJPWhen we finally spotted the BJP office in a thickly populated area the unexpected sight of Muslim women there caught our attention Muslims account for about 25 votes in Baramati segment a BJP officebearer said adding that half of them were womenYasmeen Shaikh a Kalyanborn woman married a Biryani seller in 2003 There was a time when people taunted me for supporting the BJP But ever since the BJP stopped triple talaq there is no stopping me Im now the partys Women Cells district vicepresident she saidVijaya Khomne president of Baramati BJPs Womens unit binds the lot together My Muslim sisters have given us unbeatable strength Our tribe is growing fast I quit the NCP seven years ago because it wasnt a womanfriendly party she said50 yearsPeriod the Pawar family has reigned in BaramatiIf Amethi can why cant BaramatiHOLDING his ground and drawing a parallel with Congress Lok Sabha debacle in Amethi BJP candidate Gopichand Padalkar said if Amethi could ditch Rahul Gandhi to end a dynasty Baramati could also do it and turn the tables on the politics that has been revolving around the Pawar family for 52 years Its time people know the value of their votes because the Pawars didnt allow them to realise how important the common man is to democracy The entire state has its sights set on Baramati Politicians who have betrayed Maharashtra for their vested interests are beatenBJPs charge sheet against Ajit PawarTHE Pawar family has been in power in Baramati for 50 years but the constituency as a whole is underdeveloped Only Baramati town got to reap the fruits of development Whereas 60 of the constituency does not have a regular drinking water supply The water from Nira Deoghar dam has not reached parched villages despite the powerful family dominating state affairs The Pawars destroyed sugar cooperatives for their personal gains They ruined some mills to turn them into private entities of the family members The family bought sick mills at dirt cheap prices Educational institutes are the Pawars personal properties The rate for sugarcane crop that the Pawarowned mills offer local farmers is much less than a cooperative mill that the BJP started controlling four years ago Big corporates did not set up industries at the state industrial estate because of Pawars vested interests MSRDC that built a ring road here was given a land costing Rs 60 crore on a 99year lease and yet it charged toll from locals which the BJP stopped The milk collected from farmers is sold at higher rates to a private company but the benefit is not passed on to producersNCPs charge sheet against BJPAN OUTSIDER has been brought in to create disharmony in the dominant Dhangar community They dont have any leader who can surpass Ajit Pawars achievement and influence BJP has been trying to disturb the Pawarled cooperative movement in Baramati by hook or crook because it wants NCP supporters to suffer But they wont be able to frame the NCP because it is transparent in its work especially financial matters The government has been delaying water discharge for lift irrigation projects that Ajit Pawar built for the dry land farmers in the Baramati constituency Above all these regions havent had sufficient rains in the past three to four years If the BJP government is so concerned about farmers why didnt it build a canal to distribute it to parched lands Or is the additional water being used only by farmers who have access to it Were ready to take a cut in water share The BJP has diverted western Maharashtras funds for irrigation to other regions The BJP government has been abusing its power to defame the Pawar family We challenge the PM BJPs national president and Maharashtra CM to hold rallies here to mobilise votersCatch up on all the latest Crime National International and Hatke news here Also download the new midday Android and iOS apps to get latest updates