A meeting of Maharashtra Ekikaran Samiti (MES) leaders turned violent in Belgaum as most of them clashed over the defeat of two potential MES candidates in the recently held Assembly elections. In Belgaum north and Belgaum rural constituencies, the MES candidates had to bite the dust due to strong MES rebels in the fray who went on to grab a good chunk of Marathi votes. The leaders of MES from its three splinter groups accused each other for the party’s debacle and went on to manhandle each other at the meeting in Belgaum.
A founder member of MES, Deepak Dalvi, verbally abused the leaders of Kiran Thakur’s group and blamed the latter for the division of Marathi votes among the rebels and official candidates. For the last few years, the MES has split into three separate groups and one of the stronger section among them is headed by Mr Thakur, an MES leader and editor of Marathi daily Tarun Bharat. The supporters of Mr Dalvi and Mr Thakur indulged in a fierce clash blaming each other and demanded the expulsion of Mr Thakur from the MES.
Former MES MLA, Manohar Kinekar, who lost by a narrow margin of 1,300 votes to BJP’s Sanjay Patil in Belgaum rural, was upset over the continued fight amongst leaders of his outfit and said that the rebel MES leader Sanjay Sunthkar bagged a considerable share of Marathi votes that led to his defeat. Mr Kinekar was leading until the last round of counting of ballots, but lost ultimately. He said that the newspaper Tarun Bharat and it’s editor Mr Thakur gave wide publicity to Mr Sunthkar for a few weeks before the elections that swung the Marathi votes in his favour.
The supporters of Mr Thakur said that the MES never clarified before the elections as to whether Mr Kinekar was the official candidate or Mr Sunthkar.
Some of MES top leaders Malojirao Ashtekar, B.I. Patil, T.K. Patil and R.I. Patil were also involved in a verbal clash when they were accused of failing to unite the MES before the elections took place.