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Shetti accepts NCP’s council seat offer during his meeting with Pawar at Baramati
Maha Vikas Aghadi contemplates to fill the 12 seats that fell vacant from Governor’s quota earlier this month.
Swabhimani Shetkari Sanghatana (SSS) leader Raju Shetti, who once rattled Sharad Pawar’s politics by holding protests at Baramati, visited his house Govindbaug on Tuesday and accepted NCP’s offer of a seat in the Maharashtra Legislative Council.
“I have accepted the offer for council polls,” said Shetti after his two-and-a-half-hour-long meeting with Pawar which the farmers’ leader termed “fruitful”.
The meeting between Shetti and Pawar came days after NCP state unit chief Jayant Patil visited Swabhimani Paksha founder leader’s home in Shirole and offered him a seat from NCP quota. Pawar while reacting to his meeting with Shetti tweeted, “I Visited various projects of Agriculture Development Trust in Baramati with Swabhimani Shetkari Sanghtana leader Raju Shetti.”
Twelve seats fell vacant from Governor’s quota earlier this month. The Maha Vikas Aghadi is contemplating on to go ahead to fill them as early as possible. “By offering a seat to Shetti in state legislative council, NCP has tried to pacify sugarcane growers from western Maharashtra, its erstwhile political base,” said Chitra Lele, Political Science professor at SNDT.
For Shetti, a former two-time MP from Hatkanangale in Kolhapur, to accept a seat from NCP quota is coming a long way even as he had already joined hands with Congress-NCP alliance just before the 2019 Lok Sabha polls after breaking away from BJP-led National Democratic Alliance.
During the Lok Sabha polls, NCP decided not to contest polls from Hatkanangale, from where Shetti fought against Shiv Sena’s Dhairyasheel Mane and lost.
“To keep the BJP away, we joined hands with the NCP and the Congress in 2019 and it was part of that the NCP had left one seat for us then. Today I have accepted to be MVA candidate for council polls.”
It was in November 2011, when Shetti held protest in Baramati for increased sugarcane prices, it rattled NCP chief Sharad Pawar. So much so that in the subsequent days Pawar used caste slur to run down the stir undertaken by Shetti.
Shetti’s political journey beginning from Zilla Parishad to Parliament goes parallel to his rise in the agrarian movements. Started his career as a worker in Shetkari Sanghatana, Shetti learned every small and big thing about agitation from his guru Sharad Joshi, the economist turned farmers’ leader. In his political career, Shetti has undertaken multiple successful agitations to demand higher prices for sugarcane and milk.
