Lok Sabha Polls: In Maharashtra's Kolhapur, Congress pins hopes on maharaja factor
Kolhapur is one of a few seats in Maharashtra that Congress is confident of bagging in this election. BJP's decision to backtrack from claiming this seat from Eknath Shinde's Shiv Sena too indicates that the going will not be easy for NDA this time.
In the runup to the polls, BJP was pressurising Sena to hand over this seat in western Maharashtra to it. Shinde resisted the pressure as the Sena had a sitting MP, Sadashiv Mandlik. Yet BJP was relentless in seeking the seat, but then gave up the claim, the reason for which probably was the candidate Congress has fielded.
Congress has managed to convince Shahu II Chhatrapati Maharaj, a descendant of Maratha warrior king Shivaji, to contest the polls. More importantly, he is the great grandson of Rajarshi Chhatrapati Shahu Maharaj, a maharaja of the former princely state Kolhapur and a well-known social reformer. During his rule, he had encouraged Dalit children to study and provided 50% reservation for them, as well as offered scholarships for poor meritorious students from the community. He established schools for women and legalised widow remarriage and worked to abolish child marriage. Within a day of Congress announcing Shahu Maharaj as its candidate, Prakash Ambedkar's VBA, which was making its own plans to contest separately, announced it would support his candidature.
BJP tried to rope in Samarjeet Ghatge, a BJP leader who is a distant relative of Shahu, to contest, but he refused.
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