Sitaraman to visit Baramati in Sept

Mumbai: Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman—who has been assigned by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) high command to be in charge of the Baramati Lok Sabha constituency—will make her first three-day trip to the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) supremo Sharad Pawar family’s bastion from September 22-24.

In its August 08 edition, First India had reported that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has tasked each of his cabinet ministers with the duty of improving the party’s performance in the 2024 elections. He has given them the responsibility of three districts and 144 Lok Sabha constituencies and Sitharaman has been assigned Baramati. According to party sources, Sitharaman’s Baramati tour has been finalized, thereby flagging BJP’s ‘Mission 45’ campaign in Maharashtra for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. Under the campaign, the Maharashtra BJP has decided to focus on 16 Lok Sabha constituencies where the party could improve its performance, and win. Of these, 10 constituencies are Shiv Sena-dominated seats. Newly appointed state BJP President C h a n d r a s h e k h a r Bawankule, who met with Union Home Minister Amit Shah and BJP National President JP Nadda in Delhi on Wednesday, has been asked to coordinate ‘Mission 45’. Sitharaman is expected to make similar three-day visits to Baramati over the next 20 months to strengthen party organization, strategize and make a serious bid to win the constituency held by the Sharad Pawar family since 1996.

Located in Western Maharashtra close to Pune city, the Baramati seat has never been won by the BJP, so far. The Congress was the dominant force there, and Sharad Pawar won from the seat as the party’s candidate in 1984. NCP’s Ajit Pawar represented it in 1991 as a Congress candidate and Sharad Pawar won the seat in 1996, 1998. In the 1999 and 2004 Lok Sabha elections, he won as a NCP candidate. His daughter Supriya Sule has represented the constituency since 2009. In the 2014 elections, Baramati was one of the five opposition seats that survived the ‘Modi Wave’. For the first time, the victory margin of a Pawar family member dipped below 1 lakh votes, when Sule won by over 69,000 votes even though BJP did not field a candidate, but backed Rashtriya Samaj Paksha’s Mahadev Jankar. In 2019 Lok Sabha polls, the BJP gave a ticket to debutant Kanchan Kul, but Sule improved her vote percentage and won with a margin of 1.55 lakh votes. The Baramati Lok Sabha constituency is divided into six assembly segments, starting from Khadakwasla towards Pune, followed by Bhor, Purandar, Baramati, Indapur, and Daund assembly seats. In the 2019 state Assembly polls, the BJP won Khadakwasla and Daund, while the Congress bagged Bhor and Purandar. Ajit Pawar and Dattatray Barne from the NCP are sitting MLAs from Baramati and Indapur.