Angry at party hopping, former Congress veteran Ashok Chavan’s influence in Nanded wanes
MUMBAI: The one constant in politics is fickleness. Ask Ashok Chavan, a former veteran of the Congress who left and joined the BJP in February. The former chief minister was tasked with running an aggressive campaign for the BJP’s fierce adversary, Prataprao Patil Chikhalikar, whom the Congressman defeated by 40,138 votes in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
The BJP had hoped to take advantage of Chavan’s dominance in Nanded and make Chikhalikar’s win seem easy, but the quota issue in Marathwada has altered the game.
In actuality, Chavan was unable to arrange even a single gathering in Nanded or the neighboring districts. An electoral rally in his own assembly seat of Bhokar was only made feasible by deputy chief minister Devendra Fadnavis’s appearance, accompanied by a huge police bandobast.
Nanded has long been the stronghold of the Congress party; Chavan was twice elected to the Lok Sabha, in 1987 and 2014, as was his father, Shankarrao Chavan, a two-term chief minister in 1980 and 1984. After Chavan began party hopping, Congress decided to draft an experienced neta Vasantrao Chavan instead of Chavan. Although the candidate for the seat is unlikely to get many votes, the VBA has supported him this time as well.
Journalist Sanjeev Kulkarni, who works in Nanded, claims that Chavan is unpopular because of the manner in which he joined the BJP covertly and without first contacting his fans in the area. It was anticipated that he would confer with his followers and give them an explanation of his choice before joining the BJP. They were caught off guard by his abrupt shift, he claimed.
When the BJP’s campaigning moved into rural areas, it became apparent that there was a strong anti-incumbency sentiment stemming from its inability to build sufficient infrastructure, settle the crisis in cooperative sugar factories, fix prices for agricultural produce, and end the Maratha reservation dispute. In Bhokar, Chavan took the brunt of this anger, especially from young people and farmers.
