Mumbai: Maharashtra Agriculture Minister Manikrao Kokate, who was elevated to the council of ministers to counter heavyweight Chhagan Bhujbal, is turning out to be an ’embarrassment’ for the Nationalist Congress Party (Ajit Pawar) with his frequent controversial statements. Just last week, Kokate landed in the eye of a political storm when he blamed onion farmers for the low price of their produce.
He accused them of growing onions out of proportion, resulting in a supply glut that plunged prices.
Several such statements of the minister have become a point of discussion at meetings of the NCP, in power in Maharashtra as part of the Mahayuti alliance.
According to sources in the party, the top leadership is miffed with Kokate, and at a meeting last week, Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar, who is also national president of the NCP, is said to have reprimanded him over several things.
“Slowly, the rest of MLAs are distancing themselves from Kokate. Nobody wants the image of the party to be ruined. At the meeting, Ajit dada warned Kokate that he better watch out and stay out of controversies,” a party functionary close to Pawar told ThePrint.
On record, NCP denied singling out Kokate for a rebuke. Spokesperson Anand Paranjpe Thursday told the media: “It’s not true that Kokate was singled out by Ajit dada. He (Pawar) asked all ministers to regularly attend janta darbars. He didn’t say anything more.”
Kokate is a five-time MLA from Sinnar in Maharashtra’s Nashik district and is said to be an Ajit Pawar loyalist, one of the earliest to show support to him when Pawar rebelled against his own uncle and NCP patriarch Sharad Pawar in 2023. In the course of his political career, Kokate has switched parties several times.
Speaking to ThePrint, political analyst Abhay Deshpande said: “He (Kokate) has been a controversial figure right from the start, and at times his statements are also blown out of proportion, which lands him in a foot-in-the-mouth kind of situation.”
“He has been close to Ajit Pawar from the beginning and those who stayed loyal to Pawar got preference this time,” he added, referring to Kokate’s inclusion in the council of ministers after the Mahayuti’s return to power in Maharashtra last year.
ThePrint reached Manikrao Kokate with queries via phone calls but he did not answer. This report will be updated if and when he responds.
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Congress to NCP to BJP
Kokate started his career with the Congress in the 1990s and left the party in 1999 to join NCP, floated in June that same year by Sharad Pawar. But he soon switched over to the Shiv Sena after NCP denied him a ticket for the Sinnar assembly election that year.
He represented Sinnar for two consecutive terms, in 1999 and in 2004, on a Shiv Sena ticket. At the time, he was said to be close to Narayan Rane, a rebel and firebrand shiv sainik at the time. “His real growth started when he was with Narayan Rane. He was close to Rane and followed him when he quit the party (to join the Congress),” Deshpande said.
Kokate won the assembly election from Sinnar for a third time in 2009 on a Congress ticket. But again, he did not stay with the party for long, having joined the BJP just before the next assembly election. In 2014, BJP and Shiv Sena did not contest the Maharashtra polls together and Kokate got a ticket from Sinnar. However, he lost to Shiv Sena’s Rajabhau Waje.
Kokate tried his luck in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections as an independent candidate from Nashik but lost. He then joined the undivided NCP ahead of the assembly polls held later that year and won from Sinnar for a fourth time. Siding with the Ajit Pawar-led NCP faction in 2023, he retained the assembly seat in the 2024 Maharashtra elections.
Kokate’s dig at Bhujbal
Kokate had taken a dig at NCP MLA Bhujbal last year after the latter was denied a ministry.
The relationship between Bhujbal and Ajit Pawar too has not been smooth.
In 2019, when Pawar took oath as deputy chief minister to BJP’s Devendra Fadnavis as part of a government which lasted only three days, Bhujbal did not follow Pawar. So, it was a surprise when he backed Pawar’s rebellion against uncle Sharad Pawar for control of the undivided NCP in 2023. But post that again, trouble has surfaced between the two.
Amid the agitation for inclusion of reservation for Marathas within the OBC category in 2023, Bhujbal, a leader from the Other Backward Classes (OBCs), opposed Maratha activist Manoj Jarange Patil and offered to step down from the council of ministers.
Then last year, Bhujbal was interested in fighting the Lok Sabha polls from Nashik but did not get the ticket, following which he publicly expressed his displeasure. He was also upset over not being chosen for a Rajya Sabha seat, for which the ticket was given to Ajit Pawar’s wife Sunetra who had unsuccessfully contested the Lok Sabha polls.
Faced with a sulking Bhujbal, NCP chose to prop up Kokate post the Mahayuti’s victory in the state polls last year. Party sources told ThePrint that Kokate was given preference on account of two reasons: to ensure that he remain loyal to Ajit Pawar and to keep Bhujbal, another tall leader from Nashik district, in check. With his history of switching parties, Kokate has often been on the opposite side of Bhujbal.
When Bhujbal was denied a ministry in the Mahayuti government last year, he was upset. At the time, Kokate, while speaking to the media, had said “the party pampered him (Bhujbal) a lot”.
Bhujbal reacted by saying that Kokate was an outsider and never really part of the party. He told the media that it was he who requested Sharad Pawar in 2019 to induct Kokate when he wished to join the then undivided NCP.
Kokate’s statement criticising Bhujbal apparently got him in trouble with Ajit Pawar, and the agriculture minister later said: “I have been told not to speak on this topic. This is the party’s internal matter and the party head will take a call,” he told reporters this January.
Speaking about both men, Deshpande said: “Kokate, in fact, is the Maratha face in Nashik region against Bhujbal’s OBC face. The struggle between Marathas and OBCs in Nashik is very old, even before Jarange-Patil came into the picture, and so Ajit Pawar promoted him (Kokate) as a counter to Chhagan Bhujbal.”
Bhujbal, however, may see things differently. “It is not really true that Bhujbal saab was denied an opportunity because of Kokate. Yes, the Bhujbal family has had history, but that is normal in political life,” a leader close to Bhujbal told ThePrint.
Kokate’s other controversies
Since Kokate became a state minister, he has made headlines several times not for policy decisions but his controversial utterances.
In January, he said the Ladki Bahin Yojana was putting a burden on state coffers, affecting its ability to implement the farm loan waiver scheme.
In another instance, he told the media, “The crop insurance scheme is not mired in corruption, but saw only 2 to 3 per cent irregularities. This does not mean there is corruption.”
He also said “even a beggar does not take Re 1 as alms, but here we are giving crop insurance for Re 1. Even then there are people trying to misuse it”. The farmers saw his statement as an insult.
In February, a Nashik district court convicted Kokate and his brother in a 1995 cheating case in which they were accused of furnishing fake documents and claiming lower income to secure two flats under the “chief minister’s 10 percent quota”.
Kokate appealed against the conviction in the sessions court and it was stayed. “The electorate have shown their faith in appellant No. 1 (Kokate) and elected him as Member of the Legislative Assembly,” the court said. If the minister suffers ‘disqualification’, then there will be re-election which will require ‘huge public money’,” it added.
After the old case resurfaced, the Opposition cited his conviction to demand his resignation.
Kokate earlier this month also claimed that farmers do not spend financial assistance received under agriculture schemes for the intended purposes, but instead use it for engagement ceremonies and weddings. “What do you do with the money after getting the loan waiver? Do you invest it in agriculture?” he asked. “Farmers say they want crop insurance money but use it on engagement ceremonies and weddings,” he then alleged.
He later apologised for the remark. “It was unintentional. I apologise to farmers if they felt insulted and their feelings were hurt,” Kokate said.
But the Opposition went on to demand his resignation. Congress state president Harshwardhan Sapkal said the agriculture minister “is so high on power that he insults farmers every now and then”.
“He once compared farmers to beggars, now questions what they do with loan waiver. Such a minister needs to be removed from the cabinet.”
Farmer organisations too have slammed Kokate. “The agriculture minister does not realise that it is the failure of government schemes, that is why farmers are suffering. By ignoring this fact, Kokate is rubbing salt on farmers’ wounds,” Ajit Navale, state secretary, All India Kisan Sabha, the farmers’ wing of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), said in a statement issued to the media Friday.
The functionary close to Pawar said Kokate’s utterances were becoming an embarrassment for the party.
“He was always a loud mouth and that is why he was not preferred for any ministry in the past. But he got the opportunity this time in place of Bhujbal. And since Dhananjay Munde turned down the agriculture portfolio, such a big ministry went to Kokate. Again, it was thought he would do good here since he himself is a farmer, but now it seems that more than policy decisions, controversies are being generated,” the leader said.
In the NCP party meeting last week, Kokate was also reprimanded for reaching late and not taking the ‘janta durbar’ seriously, party sources said.
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)
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