THE election campaign of CPI(M) Central Committee member, former AIKS state president and one of the outstanding leaders of the two Kisan Long Marches, J P Gavit, MLA, for the Dindori (ST) Lok Sabha seat, is now in full swing. It began on April 4, 2019 with a massive 25,000-strong public meeting at Chandwad that was addressed by CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury (reported earlier in these columns). The voting is on April 29.

For three days from April 19 to 21, over 3,000 peasant activists led by J P Gavit took out a novel and impressive 300 km-long vehicular jatha that traversed all the six assembly segments and eight of the ten tehsils that come under this seat. Most of these peasants had taken part in both the Kisan Long Marches. Starting from Dindori tehsil, it coursed through Niphad, Yeola, Nandgaon, Malegaon, Chandwad and Deola tehsils and concluded with a large rally and public meeting at the prominent Baij village of Kalwan tehsil. The ninth tehsil is Surgana, which is our bastion, and the tenth is Peth where also we have a good presence.

The enthusiastic concluding meeting on April 21 night was addressed, apart from the candidate himself, by CPI(M) Central Committee member and AIKS national president Ashok Dhawale, CPI(M) state secretariat member and AIKS state general secretary Ajit Nawale, CPI(M) state secretariat member and Nashik district secretary Sunil Malusare and CPI district secretary Raju Desle, among others. The above four leaders addressed another large public meeting earlier the same evening at the large Khedgaon village in Dindori tehsil. Several large rallies and public meetings were held en route the jatha. Thousands of leaflets were distributed and live contact with voters made.

Neither the BJP nor the NCP candidate can even think of summoning the strength to organise any such constituency-wide programme. Both of them are opportunistic turncoat candidates, the BJP nominee having been drawn from the NCP and the NCP nominee having been drawn from the Shiv Sena – both of them just on the eve of elections.  

The vehicular jatha, which made a powerful impact throughout the constituency, was led at various places by leaders of the CPI(M), CPI and other friendly parties and organisations. The leaders included AIKS state president Kisan Gujar, AIKS state office bearers Sunil Malusare, Subhash Choudhary, Savliram Pawar, Irfan Shaikh, DYFI state vice president Indrajit Gavit, CPI leader Raju Desle, MNS ex-MLA Nitin Bhosale and many others.

Support to the CPI(M) candidate is pouring in from several quarters. The Prahar Janashakti Party led by Bachchu Kadu, MLA, a prominent peasant leader from Amravati district of Vidarbha, the Lok Bharati Party led by Kapil Patil, MLC from the Konkan Teachers Constituency, the Valunj Water Struggle Committee, the Pensioners Association and many others have declared and are actually giving their active support to the campaign.

Over six lakh attractive leaflets of different kinds have been printed by the CPIM) and AIKS and are being distributed through house-to-house contact. Along with the cardinal political call of the Party to defeat the BJP and information about the candidate, they are also setting out the burning issues of the people and the peasantry that the Party and AIKS has solved and is determined to solve if elected. Dindori is predominantly a rural constituency.

A media and communication war room has been set up in Nashik city. It is headed by CPI(M) state committee members Shubha Shamim and Vijay Patil and includes SFI state president Rohidas Jadhav and SFI leaders Navnath More, Shiva Togarwar, Uttam Gavit, Pravin Gavit and others. It is being ably supported by the Party’s social media team in Mumbai led by Prasad Subramaniam. The war room is in the forefront of disseminating specially made attractive video clips about the candidate and the struggles led by him under the CPI(M) and AIKS banners, and other relevant material on WhatsApp and Facebook and is also sending out bulk SMSs throughout the constituency.

On April 24, a large public meeting will be addressed by J P Gavit, Ashok Dhawale, Ajit Nawale and others in Kalwan town. On April 25, another large public meeting will be addressed by Bachchu Kadu, MLA and the above CPI(M) and AIKS leaders at Deola. CPI(M) state secretary Narasayya Adam, CITU state president D L Karad, CITU state general secretary M H Shaikh and CITU leader Ajit Abhyankar will also address public meetings in the working class areas of the constituency.

An SFI-DYFI team led by their key state office-bearers Sunil Dhanwa, Preethy Sekhar, Balaji Kaletwad and Rohidas Jadhav will lead a 50 km 200-strong march through the Niphad and Yeola assembly segments on April 25-26. They will appeal to youth and students to vote against the disastrous policies of the Modi regime and for the CPI(M) candidate.