Mumbai: The Congress high command replaced Nana Patole with low-profile, one-term MLA Harshwardhan Sapkal as the president of its Maharashtra unit, in an attempt to shake things up after its worst-ever electoral defeat in the state three months ago.
Sapkal is from the Maratha community, while Patole is an Other Backward Classes (OBC) leader from Vidarbha.
Along with Sapkal’s appointment, party MLA Vijay Waddettiwar, an OBC leader, was appointed as its legislative party leader. Wadettiwar was the Leader of Opposition in the previous government.
Maharashtra Congress leaders ThePrint spoke to say the leadership’s choice is unexpected. Party cadres from across the state are not very familiar with Sapkal. However, he is a low-profile leader, who has climbed the ladder from the ground up, and is known to have earned the trust of Congress leader Rahul Gandhi over the last few years, party leaders said.
Sapkal’s appointment comes at a time when the Congress desperately needs to rebuild itself across the state after a crippling defeat in the assembly election, which came just six months after the party had emerged as the single-largest in the state in the Lok Sabha polls.
“Sapkal is an organisation man. It is a very new experiment. It is a wise decision by the party leadership. He keeps a low-profile and quietly works on the ground. That is exactly what the party needs right now,” Congress MLC Satej Patil told ThePrint.
The appointments of Sapkal and Wadettiwar also balance the caste equation within the party’s state leadership with there being one Maratha and one OBC leader. However, both leaders are from the Vidarbha region, a former Congress stronghold that it has lost almost entirely to the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.
The Congress won just 16 of Maharashtra’s 288 assembly seats last year. Of these, only five came from the Vidarbha region.
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Low-profile leader
A senior Congress leader said that within the state leadership, multiple names were discussed to take over the reins of the state unit. These were Prithviraj Chavan, Amit Deshmukh and even Balasaheb Thorat, who was the Congress state president before Patole took over.
“In some cases, the leaders didn’t want to take up the post. In some cases, the leaders only wanted to take charge if they were to be given a free hand,” the leader said.
He added that ultimately Rahul Gandhi has been seeking to build his own new team of trusted leaders.
A second Congress leader from Vidarbha said that while Sapkal’s name was unexpected, he is “the most appropriate choice.”
“He is someone who has trust in the grassroots systems of panchayati raj. He has worked extensively with tribals. Every year, he spends the day of Lakshmi Pujan during Diwali with the tribal population in his district. He is very frank as a leader, and always very clear about what he can and cannot do,” the leader said.
Sapkal has grown from being the Zilla Parishad Chairman of Buldhana in the early 2000s to being the Buldhana MLA in 2014. He lost the next election in 2019. At present, he is president of the Congress’ Rajiv Gandhi Panchayat Raj Sanghatan and a secretary of the All India Congress Committee (AICC).
Amit Zanak, an MLA from Risod constituency in Washim district, described Sapkal as a “true Congressi who will state his loyalty to the party even if someone asks him in his sleep”.
“He has guided several youngsters like me in politics. Since I am from his neighbouring district, I have seen Harshwardhan dada’s work very closely,” the MLA said.
(Edited by Tony Rai)
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