Lok Sabha polls: Sharad Pawar's Nilesh Lanke giving a tough fight to BJP's Sujay Vikhe

AHMEDNAGAR: Among the opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) allies in Maharashtra, NCP leader Sharad Pawar seems to have managed to field the toughest candidates against BJP. A case in point is Ahmednagar where former Parner MLA Nilesh Lanke is taking on BJP MP Sujay Vikhe Patil.

When NCP split last year, Lanke had joined the Ajit Pawar faction. However, in the run up to Lok Sabha polls, Sharad Pawar lured him back into his fold and offered him a Lok Sabha ticket. Sujay is son of state minister and Shirdi MLA Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil who was the opposition leader of Congress in 2019 before joining BJP.

The Vikhe Patils are considered pioneers of cooperative movement in the state. Lanke, on the other hand, is known as a 'Covid warrior' who is highly popular in Ahmednagar.


Sharad Pawar has claimed that when the Vikhe Patils came to know about his move to field Lanke, they sent out a message to get Pawar to select any other candidate. While there is no way of confirming Pawar's claim, Ajit has publicly spoken about how he did his best to dissuade Lanke from contesting against Vikhe Patil. Failing to persuade him, Ajit asked Lanke to resign as an MLA or else face disqualification. So confident was Lanke of his victory that he resigned as an MLA before joining the Sharad Pawar faction.

Lanke's influence is not limited to Parner, but his is a well-known face across Ahmednagar. During the Covid-19 pandemic, he was noted for going out of his way to help people with regard to hospitalisation and other issues. Lanke on his own built Covid centres and 1,000-bed Covid field hospitals during the two Covid waves in 2021 and in 2022. Notably, this help was not limited to people in his own constituency but across Ahmednagar.

Contrast this with the perception about the BJP MP. At an election rally, a man was pushed away by Sujay Vikhe Patil's supporters after he interrupted his speech by saying that the MP had been ignoring his calls for medical help during the pandemic. "Since he has been elected, Sujay has not come to our locality Indira Nagar in Bhingare village," said Manohar Aware who works as a labourer. "We don't get water in our homes, we live in slums on land that is army cantonment land and we have asked for our homes to be made pucca and regularised, but nothing has happened. We have heard good things about Lanke and hope if he gets elected, he will do something for us," said Aware's employer, Swami Raju Nair, a labour contractor. However, he said they have got piped water supply in their village after the Modi government came to power and that a lot of roads and a flyover was built, significantly improving road traffic.

"The Modi government also gave free ration," Nair added.

Farmers in the constituency, though, do not share Nair's sentiment. "Right when we were getting a good price for onions, the government stopped its exports, which led to the prices crashing. The input costs of fertilizers (and) power have all gone up, so we have suffered huge losses with the crash in prices," said Akshay Jagtap, a farmer from Parner.

Low prices for their farm produce and the government intervention to reduce onion prices are issues raised by farmers in Ahmednagar, which is also known for its dairy cooperatives as a number of farmers rear cows.

In speech after speech, Lanke has been harping on the same issues, reminding farmers about how they have not got prices for their onion and soybean crops as well as lack of prices for milk producers. The former NCP MLA has been imploring people to give him a 'chance' and has promised that they would not be 'disappointed'.

The BJP MP, instead of countering Lanke's charges and promises, has attacked the latter for not being able to speak in English, questioning how he will be able to make a speech in Parliament. The ire of farmers over lack of prices for their crops and Lanke's popularity and accessibility gives him an edge in the constituency.