Maharashtra Assembly Elections 2024 | Antarwali Sarati & Wadigodri abuzz with activities

Antarwali Sarati/Wadigodri (Jalna District): Barely six kilometres apart, Antarwali Sarati and Wadigodri villages are abuzz with activities.

Huge stretches of fields of sugarcane, cotton, cotton, mosambi or sweet-lemon and kesar-mangoes lead to these two once-nondescript villages.

Now, everyone in Maharashtra knows about these two villages.

There are meetings and movement of vehicles over the last two months in these two villages in Ambad tehsil of Jalna district of Marathwada region of Maharashtra.

After all, the two villages are the hub of the reservation issue of Maharashtra, which was an important factor during the Lok Sabha polls and now in the Vidhan Sabha polls.

While Antarwali Sarati is the homebase of Manoj Jarange-Patil, who is championing the Maratha reservation movement, Wadigodri is the place from where Laxman Hake has led the OBC resistance.

“Yes, reservation is an important issue and lot of things would be decided on caste in Marathwada in particular and Maharashtra in general,” said Nanasaheb Narwade, a farmer from Pachod located in the outskirts of Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar, the divisional headquarters of Marathwada region.

Over the past one year, the movement of cars and SUVs on the road leading to Jalna from Aurangabad, as Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar, was earlier known, has increased. “I make one to two trips to Antarwali Sarati every week over the past six months,” said Vishnu Patil, who runs a car rental agency and also drives.

Over the past 10 days, there has been a stream of visitors for Antarwali Sarati (also spelt Sarathi) as several aspirants have been travelling to Sarpanch Pandurang Tarakh’s farmhouse, from where Manoj Dada or Patil, as Jarange-Patil is fondly called, runs the campaign.

The Ambad police of Jalna district has to be extra careful in the wake of changing scenarios and barricades can be seen along the route.

Ambad falls under the Ghansawangi Vidhan Sabha seat, which is now represented by Rajesh Tope of Sharad Pawar-led NCP (SP).

Ghansawangi seat falls under the Parbhani Lok Sabha seat, which is represented by Sanjay Jadhav of Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena (UBT), who had defeated Mahadev Jankar of Rashtriya Samaj Paksha.

"Throughout the Lok Sabha polls, the focus was on Ambad and it is still so in the Maharashtra polls," said Somnath Nanavare, who runs a tea-and-snacks stall next to a petrol pump on the highway.

"In the last 14 months since the reservation issue started I have seen who's who of Maharashtra politics who has travelled on this route," he said.

Assembly Elections 2024 | The Maharashtra Assembly polls will take place against the backdrop of a fractured political landscape in the western state where the Shiv Sena and NCP will be going up against the Uddhav Thackeray and Sharad Pawar factions, even as the BJP and Congress try to make their mark. Meanwhile, in Jharkhand, the JMM faces a new challenge after Hemant Soren's recent arrest and Champai, a longstanding party member, joining the BJP. The Haryana election resulted in a shock loss for Congress, which was looking to galvanize on the Lok Sabha poll performance, while J&K also saw the grand old party eventually stepping away from the cabinet, with Omar Abdullah's JKNC forming government. It remains to be seen if the upcoming polls help BJP cement its position further or provide a fillip to I.N.D.I.A. Check live updates and track the latest coverage, live news, in-depth opinions, and analyses only on Deccan Herald.

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