The Sangli Lok Sabha seat became a bone of contention within the Mahavikas Aaghadi this election. The Congress and the Shiv Sena UBT, both alliance partners of MVA, locked horns over the seat, but later, the Shiv Sena UBT had its way. Consequently, the local Congress cadre has been unhappy, as the seat is considered its bastion. From 1962 to 2009, the Congress has contested and won this seat. This time, it was expected that the party would secure this seat, but that didn’t happen. Vishal Patil, the grandson of former Maharashtra chief minister Vasantdada Patil, was expecting to be nominated on the seat on a Congress ticket till the eleventh hour. When that didn’t happen, he decided to contest as an Independent against the MVA and Mahayuti candidate from Sangli.
Speaking to News18 while on his campaign trail in the drought-prone ‘Jat’ taluka, Patil said that while he was contesting as an Independent, his fight was for the survival of the Congress ideology in Sangli. “This seat is among the most successful seats in the nation. Congress has won it 16 times. Most people here have a strong congressional ideology. This is the second time in a row that due to alliance compulsions, the Congress party had to relinquish this seat to another partner. As a hardcore Congress party worker, my attempt is to uphold the party and its ideology,” Patil said.
When asked what exactly went wrong during the negotiations of MVA due to which the Congress couldn’t bag the Sangli seat, Patil blamed the alliance partner Shiv Sena UBT for the mess created during seat-sharing talks. “There are many reasons behind Congress not getting this seat. Shiv Sena can harp about how alliance partners should follow the ‘Aaghadi Dharma,’ but was it not a violation of ‘Aaghadi Dharma’ that they committed by declaring the candidate when negotiations over the seat were underway? Later, they turned it into an ego battle by refusing to withdraw their candidate. Even Shiv Sena UBT knows that they actually have no presence on this seat. Also, the candidate they have given is not even good enough to win the local ZP elections. Now they are forcing the leadership of the Congress party to campaign here in Sangli. When MVA announced the final seat-sharing formula, Sanjay Raut asked Nana Patole to read it out, and it was very evident from his face when he read out that the Sangli seat is with Shiv Sena UBT, that they did it willingly,” Patil said.
So far, the Congress has not taken any action against Vishal Patil for contesting as an Independent candidate against the MVA candidate in Sangli. On April 25, a meeting of Congress leadership was held in Sangli. Though Patil didn’t attend, many top leaders from the Congress state leadership backed him and expressed their helplessness in securing the Sangli seat for the party during the seat negotiations. “Congress is an ideology, it’s a thought which has been instilled in me since my early childhood. I was born into the Congress family and want to spend my entire life in the Congress family. Regardless of what has happened here, I am fighting for the Congress party as a Congressman in Sangli,” said Vishal Patil.
Seeing Sangli, now a district, one may feel that a lot of development has happened, but many talukas and small villages are drought-prone, suffering from water scarcity every year in the summer season. Patil blamed the incumbent MP for lacking the vision to resolve the water scarcity issue in talukas like Jat.
“There are a few Vidhan Sabha constituencies like ‘Jat’ which are far away from the river, hence, water shortage is an issue. My grandfather, Vasantdada Patil, former CM of Maharashtra, proposed an irrigation scheme which lifts water and brings it to talukas 100km away so that all farms can have water. Till 2014, we were doing well as water had reached ‘Jat’ Taluka, but what is left to be done is the distribution of water in the outskirts of ‘Jat’ Taluka. The present MP has failed. He should have brought more funds for the scheme. Originally, it was a state government project and didn’t receive any funding from the Centre. My brother, Pratik Patil, when he was a minister at the Centre, he ensured funding. He got more than Rs 1000 crore. Even those funds are being spent, but no additional funds were brought by the incumbent MP. For this MP, this is just a post, as he is not vocal at all in Delhi,” said Patil.
Patil is taking the agenda of development to his voters, trying to convince them to give him a chance by casting their votes for him. “The biggest advantage of Sangli is that it is a railway junction. Having a railway hub helped us have better connectivity, and now we’re kind of a medical and educational hub. Vasantdada, being CM, liberalised the education system, due to which many private education institutes opened their medical and engineering branches in Sangli. Now, we need to bring huge industries owned by the government so that people could be employed. We need to bring an airport which the current MP couldn’t bring. We also need dry ports, as the production of grapes and pomegranates happens at a large scale, and we need to export it to help farmers, but the current MP failed on this front also,” Patil said.
Sangli is the land of social reformers like Karmaveer Bhaurao Patil, Nana Patil, and educationalists like Bapujirao Salunkhe, who established the Institute of Pharmacy in Miraj. Many villages of Sangli and Satara districts are known to send the young boys of their families to the armed forces. But apart from that, now, local youth are getting more attached to civil services and competitive exams. “Youth want jobs; they want to join the army, they want to join civil services, and they want to appear for competitive exams, and we want to create that infrastructure here in Sangli district,” said Patil, criticising the Narendra Modi government for initiatives like ‘Agni-veer.’
“Such initiatives are an insult to today’s youth, as the government is asking them to take up the jobs of security guards after they complete their short service under ‘Agni-veer.’ The youth will be running the country in the future. They want good training institutes where they get trained for these exams. Sangli can become a hub for such institutes like Pune and Delhi have become; we could have, but we lost everything in last 10 years,” Patil said.
Patil faces criticism that he contested the last election on the ticket of the ‘Swabhimani Party’ and not on the Congress ticket. In response to this criticism, he replied, “People who are leveling such allegations against me have very little knowledge, as the Swabhimani Party was in alliance with the Congress party, and it was the Party’s decision that I should contest from the ticket of Swabhimani Party.”
Being an Independent candidate, Patil has gained support from the Prakash Ambedkar-led Vanchit Bahujan Aaghadi (VBA). In the last election, Vanchit garnered sizable votes for Vishal Patil, hence, he was defeated. Patil is unsure how much ground support VBA has in Sangli, but he believes that Prakash Ambedkar, who is the grandson of Babasaheb Ambedkar, has a lot of fan following in Sangli district. “His support counts for a lot. We lost the seat because VBA did not put up a candidate, but this time he has not fielded any candidate, and while extending support to me, in return he expects that if I get elected, I should not support the BJP. And everyone knows that I have been fighting against the ideology of the BJP since my childhood days,” said Patil.
Patil has set the ‘water issue’ at the top of his list of priorities for the people of Sangli. “Our constituency has been divided into two, one which is a developed area and the other which still needs a lot of attention. Talukas facing water issues are asking for water and are not interested in anything else. They expect us to bring water to their villages, and that is my number one priority,” he stated.
Another issue which he has in mind is to include Sangli in the list of smart cities. “Ideally, Sangli-Miraj-Kupwad municipal corporation should have been part of the Smart City project, but our MP failed on this front too. I proposed to get that done. If I get elected, I will make sure that Sangli city will be part of the Smart city project, and will also bring more funds to meet the demands for city infrastructure. I will also have a plan to revive the local textile industry, which suffered under BJP rule. I will also bring big-ticket projects to the district which will help to generate jobs for the youth,” said Patil.
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