Fighting the Family Fiefdom

In Aheri, the remotest taluka of Gadchiroli district in Vidarbha, a daughter is taking on her father, the sitting MLA and minister in the present government

- Barkha Mathur

A cavalcade of SUVs packed with party workers and supporters makes whistle stops across the small villages in Aheri taluka of Gadchiroli district in Vidarbha. It’s election time and Bhagyashree Atram has thrown her hat in the ring with her Jan Aakrosh Yatra. Her vehicle leads the motorcade and she is seated in front, reaching out to people who wish to come up to her to chat. Clad in a light blue synthetic sari, pallu drawn across her shoulders, vermillion smeared on her forehead and sunglasses pushed up so that nothing comes in the way as she looks at her electorate, she is the picture of an earnest candidate who is taking nervous steps into the electoral battle.

There are reasons for her to be jittery. She has pitted herself against a four-time MLA from the Aheri Vidhan Sabha constituency, Dharamrao Baba Atram, minister of Food and Drugs Administration in the ruling Mahayuti alliance. He also happens to be her father. “I am sure of what I am doing, and I have no regrets,” she says, brushing off the accusation that she is at the root of an unsavoury family feud.

“In 2019, my father had said that this was his last election, and I had been preparing to take up the mantle from him,” says Bhagyashree, who was the president of the Zilla Parishad, Gadchiroli, in 2011 and the Bandhkaam Sabhapati Zilla Parishad from 2016 to 2019. “It is not that I have taken him by surprise. It was understood that I would contest the elections in 2024,” she says justifying her move.

In September, Bhagyashree joined the Nationalist Congress Party-Sharad Pawar (NCP-SP) and declared her intentions to contest on a ticket which, she says, she had been promised by the Maratha strongman himself. Livid at his daughter’s defiance and what he termed as treachery, Dharamrao Baba Atram said, “I call upon the people of Aheri to throw her in the Pranhita River. “