Chhagan Bhujbal has bounced back from several challenges in his over 50-year-long political career, including party flips, the blast of Sharad Pawar’s anger, and a 26-month jail stint. One of the toughest is up ahead, as the 77-year-old seeks to retain the Yevla Assembly seat that he has made his bastion since first contesting from here in 2004.

Sharad Pawar chose Yevla for his first political speech after the NCP split led by nephew Ajit Pawar last year. And on Tuesday, when Pawar Senior returned to the constituency to campaign for his faction of the party – NCP (SP) – which has put up Manikrao Shinde as its Yevla candidate, he dedicated a big chunk of his speech to Bhujbal’s “betrayal”.

His former protege had a reputation of ditching his mentors, Pawar said, hinting at Bhujbal’s parting earlier with the late Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thackeray. “It is up to you to decide whether to support such a person,” he said.

The story of how Bhujbal came to represent Yevla is as colourful as the man himself. Known for its Paithani saris and home to one of the largest onion markets in the country, Yevla, located 250 km north of Mumbai, struggled with underdevelopment. This was when some prominent local residents decided to make an open appeal to “a senior state politician” to represent them. Such a personality as their MLA, the residents believed, would get Yevla the attention and resources it deserved.

As it happens, Bhujbal, who himself rose from being a vegetable vendor in Mumbai’s Byculla market, was struggling at the time, unsure of his political future after leaving the Sena and Bal Thackeray’s side. The Sena had by then vowed to decmate Bhujbal politically and, in 1995, fielded a lowly corporator, Bala Nadgaonkar, handpicked by Thackeray, to show Bhujbal his place.

In the subsequent elections of 1999, Bhujbal did not contest. When he did, and won, in 2004, as an NCP candidate from Yevla, he was made Deputy CM by Sharad Pawar.

Bhujbal has won the constituency the past four times since, and to his credit, overseen large-scale infrastructural development in Yevla, transforming it into what many see as a model constituency. Between 2004 and 2014, Yevla was widely touted as having one of the best road networks in the state, apart from a state-of-the-art Central Administrative building. It even had a public swimming pool.

However, Shinde this time is seen as a formidable rival. Instrumental in bringing Bhujbal to Yevla in 2004, and hence a known face in the area, Shinde contested in 2009 as a Shiv Sena candidate against Bhujbal from the seat and lost.

However, the anti-incumbency of 20 years is catching up on Bhujbal, with a strong undercurrent of resentment against him among party workers for “favouring” hangers-on and family members. Son Pankaj is a two-time (2009, 2014) MLA from the neighbouring Nandgaon constituency.

What set off the dip in Bhujbal’s fortunes was his arrest in 2014 on money laundering charges, after the BJP defeated the Congress-NCP to come to power. Bhujbal spent more than two years in jail. But while his legal troubles have now largely subsided, his decision to align with Ajit Pawar and against Sharad Pawar in the NCP split has not gone down well in Yevla. Many of his supporters do not have sympathy for his decision to ditch Pawar Senior.

In another costly gamble, Bhujbal has taken a very strong vocal position against the Maratha quota. With Sharad Pawar, a Maratha leader, having their backing, Bhubal, a member of the Mali OBC group, has been threatening that any reservation for Marathas would not be acceptable as it would come at the cost of OBCs. Shinde, the NCP (SP) Yevla candidate, is a Maratha.

 

There have been reports of phone calls by villagers in Maratha-dominated areas of the constituency, urging Bhujbal not to step into their villages. In some places, Bhujbal’s campaign vehicles have been attacked.

Maratha quota activist Manoj Jarange-Patil has threatened to ensure that Bhujbal does not win, further leaving him shaky.

In his speech in Yevla Tuesday, Pawar talked about how when Bhujbal was in jail, the then united NCP had stood by him. “My daughter visited him in jail, and after he was released, we gave him a ticket to contest the 2019 elections. We even made him a minister in the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government. But Bhujbal has no faith in ideology. He betrayed the party, the leadership, and the people… Now, it’s time to teach him a lesson.”

With hurdles mounting, a more conciliatory Bhujbal has been to the fore during the campaign. He has been asking why Sharad Pawar is “selectively” targeting him, claiming that other rebel NCP leaders have faced far less scrutiny.

He has also been urging voters to judge him on his work rather than the divisive rhetoric of caste. “People are playing the caste card and spreading the poison of casteism in society. I do not look at caste. I am here to do development. Bhujbal works for everyone,” he has been telling voters.