Sweet Power Plays

In Maharashtra, the political landscape is deeply entwined with the sugar industry, a sector that has historically bolstered the ambitions of political figures from Vasantdada Patil to Sharad Pawar. With less than a month to go for the Assembly polls, Ajit Pawar’s hold over sugar factories and cooperatives in western Maharashtra will now be put to the test with the Mahayuti coalition, particularly the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), banking on the Deputy CM to score big for the ruling alliance in this region.

It is almost axiomatic to note that the cooperative sugar sector has been the backbone of the state’s rural economy in western Maharashtra, traditionally dominated by the Congress and the undivided Nationalist Congress Party (NCP). The BJP’s ascent in 2014 and the subsequent decade was marked by shifting allegiances in this belt, with former Congress leaders such as Radhakrishna Vikhe-Patil, Vijaysinh Mohite-Patil and Harshavardhan Patil (to name a few) switching allegiances to the saffron party, reflecting a trend of fluid political loyalties among sugar magnates. Harshavardhan Patil recently switched back to Sharad Pawar’s NCP (SP) as did Mohite-Patil, Pawar’s old confidante who has served as the state’s Deputy CM in the past.

As Ajit Pawar’s faction emerges from a split NCP, the political stakes have transformed. Ajit Pawar, with his extensive ties to both private and cooperative sugar mills. has previously held influential positions within entities personifying the prosperous economy of this region, like the Maharashtra State Cooperative Bank. The cooperative sugar network is crucial for electoral success here, holding sway over more than 70 of the state’s 288 Assembly seats.

Until the 2009 Assembly elections, the Congress and NCP held a dominant position in Western Maharashtra, both in terms of seat count and vote share. However, since 2014, the BJP has made significant inroads in the region, although it has not yet surpassed the combined seat count of Congress and NCP. In the 2019 Assembly elections, out of the 70 seats in Western Maharashtra, the undivided NCP secured 27 seats, the Congress 12, while the BJP managed to win 20 seats and the undivided Shiv Sena took five.

Today, Sharad Pawar’s NCP (SP) faction has only seven MLAs from the sugar belt as opposed to Ajit Pawar’s faction, which commands 26. Yet, the Lok Sabha election, which saw Sharad Pawar administer a severe drubbing to the Mahayuti, particularly Ajit’s faction and the BJP, sees a buoyant NCP (SP) confidence of reasserting its dominance in this belt.

To break Ajit’s stranglehold over sugar cooperatives here, the canny Sharad Pawar is now promoting fresh faces to combat the ruling NCP. In Ambegaon, after Dilip Walse-Patil shifted to Ajit’s faction, Sharad Pawar is now promoting Devdatta Nikam, a longtime manager of the Bhimashankar cooperative sugar mill founded by Walse-Patil. Likewise, in Kolhapur’s Kagal constituency, Pawar senior is fielding royal Samarjeet Ghatge to challenge the Ajit camp’s senior leader Hasan Mushrif, while in Ahmednagar’s Akole, he has picked Amit Bhangre.

For it is in western Maharashtra that the stakes for Ajit are the highest and the outcomes uncertain—much like the fluctuating price of sugar itself.