The Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) is trying hard to win both its seats in Sindhudurg and Ratnagiri. But its ally, the Shiv Sena, has been strangely non-chalant about the six seats it is contesting in these two districts.
None of the top Sena leaders has campaigned in Sindhudurg and Ratnagiri, making things easy for the Congress-NCP. Both coastal districts used to be Sena bastions, but that scenario has changed drastically in the past few years.
Of the eight sitting MLAs from the districts, only three now belong to the Sena-BJP combine. The Congress-NCP has taken the upper hand by winning the majority of the seats in the by-elections held in the past five years. The changing profile of the constituencies, and Narayan Rane’s rising control over local politics, seem to have taken the fight out of the Sena.
The BJP, however, is slogging it out. Vinod Tawde, president of the party’s state unit, held four meetings on Tuesday, drawing large crowds in spite of the rains. He said that both BJP candidates — Bal Mane from Ratnagiri and Pramod Jathar from Deogad — stood in good stead.
Sena executive president Uddhav Thackeray and senior leader Manohar Joshi cancelled their tours, citing the heavy rains. Opposition leader Ramdas Kadam and leader Vinayak Raut took over the reins of the campaign in the coastal districts. But with Kadam busy fighting his own battle in Guhagar — where he is facing stiff challenge of BJP rebel Vinay Natu and Bhaskar Jadhav of the NCP — Raut alone could do little.
None of the four rallies held by Tawde was for any of the Sena candidates. A local BJP leader said that the Sena had not asked for help from its ally. Expressing dismay at their leaders’ apathy, Sena workers said that at least one rally should have been staged to boost their morale. “There is too much of Rane terror here. Visits by our senior leaders would have given us a big boost,” said a Sena leader from Sindhudurg.
