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Congress confident of regaining Beed, Nagpur

The Congress in Maharashtra is making an all-out effort to wrest the Beed and Nagpur Lok Sabha seats from the Bharatiya Janata Party. Both seats were once considered Congress bastions.

Ironically, Beed and Nagpur were lost to Congress members who defected to the BJP on the eve of the 1996 election: Rajni Patil and Banwarilal Purohit respectively. However, both Patil and Purohit, who owns The Hitavada daily have now quit the BJP.

Patil had been apprehensive that she would not be nominated by the BJP this time round, despite being praised by the BJP's prime ministerial candidate, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, at a public rally in Beed. BJP workers are also said to have been annoyed with her due to her proximity with Congress workers, which continued even during her years in the BJP.

Purohit, on the other hand, quit the BJP after a long dispute with BJP top leaders Pramod Mahajan and Gopinath Munde over the Nippon Denro Ispat power project at Bhadravati. Purohit had made allegations of corruption against Mahajan.

Patil has returned to her mother party, and ensured that the Congress nominated her husband, Ashok, as its candidate from Beed. The BJP has fielded Maharashtra minister Jaysingh Gaekwad; while former Bombay high court judge B N Deshmukh is the United Front candidate.

Patil's departure from the BJP has dealt a blow to party workers. She nurtured her constituency for 10 years under the Congress, before moving to the BJP in 1996. A demoralised Congress proved no match for the combined onslaught of Patil and the venom spewing Shiv Sena-BJP alliance, and lost.

This time, however, not only is the Congress united and strengthened by her return, it has also managed to rope in the support of the Samajwadi Party and the Republican Party of India. Beed has a sizeable dalit and Muslim population, many of whom are likely to back the Samajwadi Party and the RPI's choice respectively.

Besides Patil's defection, there is more trouble in the BJP. Party workers are unhappy with Deputy Chief Minister Gopinath Munde for imposing Gaekwad as the candidate. Earlier expectations were that former legislator Adinath Navle would be nominated.

United Front candidate Deshmukh, an outsider, will have little impact and the election may end up as a fight between the Congress and the BJP.

In the 1996 election, Purohit, as a BJP candidate, defeated the Congress contestant by a devastating 350,000-vote margin. Interestingly, despite being the headquarters of the Hindu right-wing Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, neither the BJP nor its earlier avatar the Jan Sangh had ever managed to win this constituency.

The BJP has fielded Ramesh Mantri against Congressman Vilas Muttemwar. The BJP candidate is perceived as being weak against Muttemwar, who was a minister of state in the P V Narasimha Rao government. It is believed the BJP specifically chose Mantri to prove that it does not need wellknown contestants to win an election.

In the last election to the Nagpur Municipal Corporation, various BJP candidates garnered around 175,000 votes. The Shiv Sena collected about 50,000 votes; clubbed together the total amounts to 225,000 votes. But Purohit won 350,000 votes in the 1996 election. This leads to the inference that Purohit gained about 125,000 extra votes because of his reputation. Also, the Congress then was facing internal dissension and had put up a weak candidate.

Now with Purohit deciding not to contest, and the Congress allied with the RPI, the Congress is likely to become stronger at the cost of the BJP. To help it further, the Janata Dal is fielding Abdul Rehman Karim Kazi in lieu of Umakant Ramteke, who had polled over 160,000 votes in 1996. Kazi, a Janata Dal member in the municipal corporation, is quite unknown in the city. Muttemwar, thus, appears poised to wrest the seat from the BJP.

Purohit, who has backed out of his decision to contest as an Independent candidate, says he will campaign against Sena-BJP candidates.

"I will tour the entire state and expose the corruption and other misdeeds of the alliance government," he said.

Prasanna D Zore, UNI

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