How BJP’s bold moves shake Maharashtra’s political stage
With internal rifts, Maharashtra’s alliance falters as BJP tightens its grip
The Maharashtra musical chairs between the OG parties, the national parties, and the breakaway groups continue. If the Congress, the Sharad Pawar-led faction of the NCP, and the Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena were looking like easy winners, they have, with familiar characteristic incompetence — mainly on the GOP’s part — frittered away the advantage.
The BJP, after the Haryana upset where the Congress virtually threw away a winning election, has a new swagger and has thrown in everything it has in the MAHA battle.
This involves some dirty tricks using the media and its infamous IT cell, with a national television channel citing unnamed “sources” to say that Uddhav Thackeray was negotiating a return to the saffron fold by meeting Devendra Fadnavis of the BJP while sending emissary Rajya Sabha MP, Sanjay Raut, to negotiate with Amit Shah in Delhi.
This set the political grapevine buzzing in Mumbai, even as the UBT Sena cited “fake news” and “dirty tricks by the BJP”. Raut said indignantly that after whatever had been done to them by the BJP, including breaking the Sena and making Maharashtra subordinate to Gujarat’s interests, the Sena would never ally with the BJP again.
But the BJP was only fishing in troubled waters roiled by the alliance themselves, who can’t agree on a seat share or who to project as a chief ministerial face.
The Congress’s intransigence on not agreeing to project former Chief Minister, Uddhav Thackeray, as the CM face of the alliance has upset the sensitive leader.
Thackeray, who recently had a bypass surgery and has multiple back issues which have also made surgeries necessary, has been upset by the abrasive attitude and approach of Nana Patole, the Congress chief who is a turncoat from the BJP and nurses chief ministerial ambitions.
Pawar: The hardest to read
The curious lack of intervention, almost lack of interest, on the part of Sharad Pawar, who conjured up the unlikely alliance, is also significant. Pawar has made his demands in the seat share agreement but has not shown any support to Thackeray at all, considering that he was his self-appointed “mentor” in alliance politics who had talked him into being the CM of the alliance till the government was toppled by the BJP when they split the Sena.
Pawar is the most opaque politician in India, the hardest to read, who sometimes may not even know what he plans to do in the next week, as he once jokingly told me.
His silence and his lack of effort to save the tottering alliance, when he has a direct line to the Congress “high command”, has baffled the Sena. They offer two reasons: one, he wants a suitably chastened Ajit Pawar, his nephew who broke his party, to return.
This has more to do with party and other finances than emotions. The other two allies are not keen on Pawar junior coming back to the fold, as they view him as a political liability.
Two, that Pawar’s unbeatable weathervane has detected some political undercurrent favouring the BJP and Eknath Shinde government, and has worked out a “suitable alternative”. Depending on the numbers, Pawar could swing either way because win or lose, he needs to be in power. Pawar has now crossed 80 and is anxious to settle the political future of his political heir, only child Supriya Sule, and as is usual in Indian politics, dynasty will trump any ideology.
Pawar is not the only Maharashtra politician guilty of dynastic nepotism. Uddhav Thackeray partially wants the CM’s job so that he can secure son Aditya Thackeray as his successor in the party and the plum job.
After taking the Haryana win for granted when even a vote had not been cast, the Congress is making the same mistake in Maharashtra. The voters are seeing the unedifying spectacle of three parties having a public spat on seats and the yet unearned goodies of office.
They will not be wrong to conclude that none of these parties cares about the serious issues bedevilling Maharashtra, from unemployment, to security, to industries moving away from India’s second-most industrialised state (Tamil Nadu is the number one).
Signs of political frustration
Meanwhile, Eknath Shinde has solidified his grip on the job and the alliance, getting Devendra Fadnavis, his biggest bugbear and rival for his job, to say publicly that Shinde is the CM face. Shinde is not overly bothered about the periodic tantrums of Ajit Pawar, seeing them for the signs of political frustration they are.
Analysts say that the voters perceive the Shinde Sarkar to be hugely corrupt but effective administrators. This, in a nutshell, is how the opposition let the narrative slip away from them. Instead of harping on the widespread corruption in Mumbai Mantrayala, the alliance is letting Shinde and BJP tell the story.
The BJP central leadership has kept the Maharashtra unit on message and on discipline, reining in Fadnavis and his ambition. The RSS, which has its headquarters in Nagpur, has also made this election a prestige battle.
If the alliance does not get its lacklustre act together, the BJP and Shinde will run away with this battle. Health and hygiene warning for them: Stop being your own opposition.