Mumbai: In January this year, as the BJP and their right-wing supporters decided to make the consecration of the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya a “national event”, the situation across the country tensed up. The effects of it were far and wide, and in Maharashtra, it was first felt in Mira Road, a fast-developing neighbourhood in Thane district.
In the days to follow, it became amply clear that the violence was an outcome of inflammatory speeches delivered by BJP leaders.
The state machinery too had aided the BJP leaders’ provocations, refusing to take action and in one case even allowing one of them to call for a press conference inside the police’s head office.
Come April, the situation suddenly changed. This was not because the party leaders had a change of heart, but because of the Bombay high court’s intervention in a petition filed by concerned citizens.
The court’s decision, locals say, has given them much-needed respite.
Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty
Aktar Shaikh, a local realtor who bore the brunt of the attack in Mira Road on January 22, told The Wire that the Muslim community in the area was bracing themselves for more such incidents. “But since the main perpetrators now have FIRs against them, they are brought under control”.
Shaikh was referring to the FIRs that the police registered against two MLAs – Nitesh Rane and Geeta Jain – for openly making inflammatory speeches, leading to communal clashes in many pockets of Mira Road.
While the police have not taken any action against the duo, the FIR and the pending high court case have acted as a deterrent.
The election pitch in Mira Road, which is a part of the Thane constituency, had to stay away from the usual communal references.
In the Thane constituency, 24 candidates are in fray. But the battle is between the two Sena candidates.
The two-time MP Rajan Vichare is back in the contest as the Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray)’s candidate, while the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena has fielded Naresh Mhaske, a former mayor of Thane.
Both candidates are familiar faces and know the local nerve well. Vichare and Mhaske both were mentored by the late Anand Dighe.
While Vichare is harping on the work done in the region while the Mahavikas Aghadi government was in power in the state, it is Shinde who is toiling hard for Mhaske. It is a fight for existence or “astitva”, as his party supporters say.
Shinde’s entire political journey, from a local Sena karyakarta to the state chief minister, was from this constituency. When Shinde decided to jump ship and join hands with the BJP, it was his supporters from Thane district who had first rallied around him.
So, losing the seat would mean losing face.
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Thane has traditionally been a Shiv Sena fortress. The party’s stronghold extends from Thane to the adjoining Kalyan constituency, where Shinde’s son Shashikant Shinde, a two-time MP, is contesting once again.
Though Mhaske is a Sena (Shinde) candidate, his election pitch has been a confusing one. While speaking at a grand rally organised in Mira Road last week, Mhaske had very little to speak about Shinde. His over ten-minute-long speech harped on Narendra Modi and Devendra Fadnavis’s work.
Sabeer Shaikh, a journalist with close to two decades of experience, and an editor of a popular YouTube channel named ‘On Record Mira Bhayandar’, says his entire election pitch has been like this.
Thane was one of the most contentious seats for the Mahayuti, an alliance between the BJP, Sena (Shinde) and Nationalist Congress Party (Ajit Pawar). While Shinde wanted his candidate Mhaske to be fielded from his home turf, the BJP wanted Sanjeev Naik, the elder son of the senior leader Ganesh Naik, as the tri-party alliance’s candidate.
The decision came at the last minute and as a result, Mhaske barely had the time to campaign in the region.
“My candidature took time to be announced and reaching out to my voters has been one of the biggest challenges,” Mhaske acknowledged at the rally in Mira Road.
When most Sena supporters from Thane went along with Shinde, Vichare decided to stay with the Thackeray family. The delay in Mhaske’s candidature and the discontent among BJP workers has given an edge to Vichare in the region. His pitch has focussed on the party gaddaar (traitor) – a reference to Shinde – along with invoking Bal Thackeray’s name in his speeches.
In 2019, Vichare polled 740,969 votes, defeating the then-NCP candidate Anand Paranjpe by 412,145 votes.
The Thane constituency comprises six assembly seats, namely Thane, Airoli, Mira Bhayandar, Ovala-Majiwada, Kopri-Pachpakhadi and Belapur. Of them, the BJP controls four constituencies while two are under Shinde’s Sena.
Shinde is an MLA from the Kopri-Pachpakhadi seat.
When Mumbai could no longer accommodate more migration and visibly showed signs of bursting at the seams, the migrant population – from both within and outside Maharashtra – slowly started settling in the adjoining Thane district.
Thane has an interesting demography. A large part of the native population, or bhoomi putras as they like to call themselves, has been a traditional supporter of the Shiv Sena.
But the migrants from the northern states of India and from Gujarat both make up a sizable share of the population and are seen to naturally gravitate towards the BJP.
