Bahubalis at loggerheads

Mumbai: Two arch rivals in Maharashtra politics have stood before each other to prove their supremacy. A slugfest between Congress’s Balasaheb Thorat and BJP’s Radhakrishna Vikhe-Patil has directly entered the arena at Ahilyanagar (formerly Ahmednagar). As the selection of candidates is still underway in many constituencies, the fracas between Thorat and Vikhe-Patil has intensified the campaigning.

Political tensions erupted in Sangamner after BJP local leader Vasant Deshmukh made controversial remarks about Jayashree Thorat, daughter of Congress leader Balasaheb Thorat, during a rally attended by former BJP MP Sujay Vikhe-Patil.

The incident sparked violence in Sangamner and the surrounding area where an angry mob attacked vehicles belonging to Mahayuti leaders. Congress workers staged a sit-in protest outside the police station for seven hours until authorities registered a First Information Report (FIR) at approximately 5am. The protests even continued on Saturday morning, with demonstrators demanding Deshmukh’s arrest.

The Vikhe-Patil family pioneered the state’s strong cooperative movement. Vithalrao Vikhe- Patil, Radhakrishna’s grandfather, formed India’s first cooperative sugar factory. His son, Balasaheb Vikhe-Patil, was a Congress MP, who in his initial years joined a rebel Congress faction with former Congress CM Shankarrao Chavan. Radhakrishna, is Balasaheb’s son. Even he has switched between parties. Radhakrishna was elected as a Congress MLA when in 1997, he joined the Shiv Sena and was inducted as an agriculture minister in the Manohar Joshi-led Shiv Sena-BJP state government.

Later that year, Balasaheb Vikhe-Patil too switched to the Shiv Sena and was elected as an MP on a Shiv Sena ticket in 1998. He joined the National Democratic Alliance government first as a minister of state for finance and later as heavy industries minister. Both father and son after a while returned to the Congress party.

On the other hand, Vijay aka Balasaheb Thorat is Congress loyalist has won the assembly elections consequently eight times from Sangamner. His father Bhausaheb Thorat was also a member of legislative assembly. A political feud that has lasted three generations has shaken the foundations of the Congress and Sharad Pawar’s Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) in this district that’s the “sugar bowl” of Maharashtra. Though the tiff continued for long among Thorat and Vikhe-Patil, this was the first time the scuffle directly went on to the streets.