Pune: Former Maharashtra chief minister Ashok Chavan, Union Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde, veteran BJP leader Gopinath Munde, Nationalist Congress Party chief and Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar’s daughter Supriya Sule and farmers’ leader Raju Shetty are among the political heavyweights whose fate will be decided on April 17.

The second phase of the Lok Sabha elections in Maharashtra will cover 19 constituencies from Western Maharashtra, Marathwada and a small part of Konkan region. The constituencies are Hingoli, Nanded, Parbhani, Maval, Pune, Baramati, Shirur, Ahmednagar, Shirdi (a reserved Scheduled Caste seat), Beed, Osmanabad, Latur (SC), Solapur (SC), Madha, Sangli, Satara, Ratnagiri-Sindhudurg, Kolhapur and Hatkanangale.

The elections will also likely see a challenge to the powerful sugar barons or the Maratha lobby of western Maharashtra and who are mostly Congress and NCP ministers and politicians. They control the economy of this region through co-operative sugar factories.

In spite of their dominance in many of these constituencies, the anti-incumbency factor, low prices of sugar cane, a two-year drought and recently untimely rains that destroyed crops, and the enormous irrigation scams under the irrigation ministry that have been covered up could work as a backlash against the NCP and the Congress.

In the rural part and township of Baramati constituency in Pune district, Pawar’s daughter Sule is likely to retain her seat, which she won by a margin of 200,000 votes in 2009.

The Shiv Sena-BJP has now supported Mahadev Jankar of Rashtriya Samaj Party while Aam Aadmi Party has fielded former Indian Police Service officer Suresh Khopade against Sule. Though this seat has been held by her father and then herself in successive parliamentary elections, Sule is not taking it for granted and has been on an intensive campaign, meeting her voters.

In Beed, though Munde has held this seat, he now has to ensure that his estranged nephew Dhananjay Munde, who is an NCP member of the legislative council, does not block his success.

The NCP has fielded Suresh Dhas, minister of state for revenue, for this seat.

Interestingly, Marathi newspapers carried a news report of “Tai versus Tai” (Marathi meaning for Tai is elder sister) — a reference to Pankaja Munde, Gopinath Munde’s daughter, who campaigned in Baramati for the Sena-BJP candidate and launched a tirade against the Pawars.

This was in retaliation to Sharad Pawar’s speeches that ridiculed Munde’s ambition of becoming the union agriculture minister after the NDA came to power.

Meanwhile, in the Nanded constituency of Marathwada region, Adarsh scam-tainted former chief minister Ashok Chavan is pitted against the BJP’s D.B. Patil.

Though there are 23 candidates in the contest, the real battle is between these two men. Though the BJP has attacked the Congress at every opportunity on the nomination of Chavan, insiders say he is the only strong partyman in this region which, after the demise of former chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh, was left with a vacuum.