Who is Jaywant Awale? — this is a question you hear frequently in Latur’s urban street corners and its rural pockets. For a district that has been a traditional Congress bastion — former Union home minister Shivraj Patil has been elected MP from this district for seven terms until 2004 while the Latur Assembly segment has had a Congress MLA six times since 1978 — it’s strange that people do not know their Congress candidate even a few days before the polling day.

With the constituency reserved for SC candidates post-delimitation, Awale is the man nominated by the Congress, a Kolhapur resident and, to Latur’s 20.4 lakh voters, a rank outsider. But not many know Awale’s main opponent, the Bharatiya Janata Party’s Sunil Gaikwad, either. Awale was elected as an MLA from Vadgaon in Kolhapur for five consecutive terms from 1980 to 1999 and is a senior leader in the state while Gaikwad, a local publisher and journalist, is a political novice.

“The caste equations will work in my favour,” claims Gaikwad, a Buddhist who has been organising an annual Dhamma Parishad in Latur’s Dalit areas for several years now.

Following delimitation, nearly 20 per cent of the electorate comprises Dalits, mainly from the Mahaar community to which Gaikwad belongs. Factor in the fact that a sizeable number of these Dalits belong to the areas newly added to Latur, and the image of the district as a significant Congress stronghold begins to dim a bit. A BSP candidate and nominees from other Dalit parties have further tangled the equation. But turning the Dalits towards the Congress fold is the least of Awale’s challenges.

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