Team Herald
PONDA: In the backdrop of friends-turn-foes situation at Marcaim for 2022 election, the hot point of debate nowadays is will Sudin Dhavalikar be able to retain his 2017 Assembly election winning margin record from Marcaim constituency with 13,680 votes in forthcoming election?
Sudin Dhavalikar’s supporter Rajesh Kavlekar who is also Kavlem Sarpanch, said that MGP workers are working hard for Sudin’s victory and expect him to win with record highest margin of votes in this election too.
But the rivals feels that Dhavalikar’s friends–turned–foes Congress candidate Lavoo Mamledar and BJP candidate Sudesh Bhingi will eat up more than 40 percent of the total votes, which will make it difficult for Dhavalikar to repeat same performance as he did in 2017 election.
Sudhin Dhavalikar became Marcaim MLA after defeating BJP Shripad Naik in 1999 election. His good rapport with voters has made him a popular leader and has won five consecutive elections.
But now he faces challenge of from two rivals both of whom were once his close friends. Sudesh Bhingi was strong supporter of Sudin but turned against him after the latter denied him MGP ticket for contesting the last ZP election from Marcaim. Bhingi then contested as an independent candidate and secured sizeable votes from Kavlem ZP constituency. He has been inducted by BJP and is contesting on BJP ticket from Marcaim Constituency.
He has his personal vote share of around 3000 votes in Marcaim. Besides, there are traditional BJP votes which will go in his favour.
Former MLA of Ponda, Lavoo Mamledar is another friend of Sudin Dhavlikar who has turned against Dhavalikar. Their rivalry began after Mamledar lost 2017 Assembly election to Ravi Naik. Thereafter MGP inducted Dr. Ketan Bhatikar as new leader for Ponda MGP and was no longer leader of the party in Ponda.
The situation turned worse later when MGP expelled Mamledar from MGP citing that he was indulging in anti-party activities. Hurt with MGP action, Mamledar blamed Dhavalikar brothers of running MGP party as their family fiefdom.
Mamledar claims that he is contesting from Marcaim to give justice to Bahujans as till Sudin represents Marcaim no Bahujans will get MGP ticket to contest from this constituency.
Mamledar even alleged that Dhavalikar failed to bring development in Marcaim for past 25 years and the latter wants to continue dynasty politics in future by offering ticket to his son. This, according to him, will deprive Bahujans the opportunity to contest elections.
There is sizeable number of Bhandari community votes which Lavoo depends on for his victory.
