Congress to field Patole from city

Nagpur: Its official. Nana Falgunrao Patole will be the Congress candidate from Nagpur who will take on the BJP heavyweight and sitting member Nitin Gadkari for the Lok Sabha election scheduled on April 11. The Congress party’s central election committee on Wednesday cleared the nomination of Patole and Dr Namdeo Usendi from Gadchiroli seats. The two figure in the list of 21 nominees.
Though BJP is yet to formally announce Gadkari’s name, it is expected that the party will renominate most of its sitting MPs. In the 2014 elections, Gadkari had defeated Vilas Muttemwar, seven-time MP, by a margin of 1.85 lakh votes.

Faced with severe factionalism in the city unit of the Congress, the party seems to have played it safe by betting on a fresh face from outside and not aligned with any of the feuding factions. It has also played the ‘Kunbi’ card in the hope that the caste factor would help the party scrape through.

Once the invincible fort of the Congress, Nagpur seat was lost along with other nine seats in Vidarbha as the BJP-Sena made a total sweep. Gadkari, contesting for the first time for Lok Sabha, won quite easily and also became one of the top ministers in the Narendra Modi government.

Patole, 55, a native of Bhandara district was elected on the BJP ticket from Bhandara-Gondia seat defeating NCP stalwart Praful Patel. But the victory was credited to the force of Modi wave that pushed him through.

Halfway through his term, in 2107 Patole rebelled against the BJP and Modi. Charging the saffron party of being indifferent to farmers’ woes he resigned as BJP MP and immediately switched back to the Congress.

On Congress ticket, Patole was earlier elected twice to Maharashtra legislature, in 1999 and 2004. In 2008, he quit the Congress, again citing the same reason: Congress had done little for the distressed farmers.

For someone all along claiming to be wedded to the cause of farmers in a rural setting, Patole will now have to find a foothold in a total urban milieu where poll issues are different. Besides the ‘outsider’ tag that will stick to him, Patole will have to work hard to get support of all factions in the Congress.

After he crosses the party hurdles, Patole will have the enormous challenge of taking on Gadkari whose image transcends caste and community barriers having made a mark nationally as development-oriented minister. That he enjoys full support of RSS is a big positive for Gadkari.

Dr Namdeo Usendi had contested in Gadchiroli in 2014 too and was defeated by Ashok Nete of the BJP. Usendi belongs to Madiya tribe and is among the first from that tribe in Gadchiroli to study medicine. He was elected as MLA on Congress ticket from that district in 2004 and 2009 and is believed to have made it to the inner circle of Rahul Gandhi.