Sunil Gatade and Venkatesh Kesari 
The traditional Marathi vote looks to be split three ways for the first time ever, with three parties championing the cause from several constituencies in the upcoming Maharashtra assembly polls.
Raj Thackeray’s Maharashtra Navnirman Sena has thrown its hat in the ring in several key constituencies in and around Mumbai where Shiv Sena’s Shinde faction and the Uddhav Thackeray faction are already battling it out.
After having been virtually out in the cold for a while – largely thanks to supporting the wrong party or simply not paying enough attention to the polls – Raj Thackeray appears to be taking electoral politics seriously this time. He is also keen to introduce his son Amit to electoral politics.
Raj is famously the cousin of former chief minister Uddhav Thackeray. His arrival in earnest could upset the calculations of Uddhav’s Sena, which is a part of the opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi. The Bharatiya Janata Party-dominated Mahayuti’s hopes will also have to tackle with a new reality.
In the 2009 Lok Sabha elections, Raj’s party had entered in the electoral fray in Mumbai, Thane, and Nashik regions, and the
development had hit the Shiv Sena-BJP alliance hard in several seats there. This had led to a bonanza for Congress as Raj’s party could not win a single seat but played a role in reducing votes for the BJP and the then undivided Shiv Sena.
Observers believe that this time will see a tighter race in key seats in the assembly polls, with Congress and BJP’s back-of-the-envelope calculations going haywire.
A split in the Marathi votes helps the BJP more than any party in the state. This is because it was the main hurdle in its expansion plans as a pan-Maharashtra party.
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Raj’s entry could affect the plans of Uddhav – as well as incumbent Eknath Shinde – to become the next chief minister. Uddhav’s
party believes that he is the rightful claimant for chief ministership of the MVA, but others in the alliance are not too keen.
BJP has risen in Maharashtra by riding pillion behind Bal Thackeray and his legacy more than three decades. The late BJP leader Pramod Mahajan had rightly realised that such a strategy would alone take the party on the fast lane. Till then, the BJP was known as a “shetji–bhatji” party for Brahmins and the business class and had not spread much to the Maharashtrian countryside. BJP’s conscious attempts at social engineering also helped its spread in the then-Congress-dominated state.
An epicentre for the triangular race among the three Senas is best seen in Mahim, where Amit Thackeray is the candidate of MNS, which has the railway engine as its symbol. Sada Sarvankar of the Shinde Sena is the sitting MLA, who has been renominated. It also has Mahesh Sawant as the Shiv Sena (UBT) candidate.
Similarly, in nearby Worli, Aditya Thackeray, son of Uddhav, has been renominated and is being opposed by Sandeep Deshpande, a senior MNS leader. Shinde Sena has sprang a surprise by announcing plans to field former Union minister Milind Deora against Aditya.
Some believe that whatever might be their public posture, both Sena led by Uddhav and the MNS led by Raj would ensure that the two
Thackerays in the fray – Aditya and Amit – romp home comfortably, as it is a question of the prestige of the Thackeray family.
Bala Nandgaonkar, a close associate of Raj, spoke recently on the prospects of Uddhav and Raj eventually coming together.
All three Senas vouch for the betterment of the Marathi manoos and all of them have been or projected themselves as staunch champions of Hindutva in order to widen their regional appeal. For all the three Senas, Bal Thackeray, who founded the Shiv Sena over six decades ago, is a venerable figure.
While Uddhav and Raj Thackeray still prioritise the Marathi vote, the Congress believes in Maratha more than Marathi in elections, and the BJP has nothing to do with either Marathi or Maratha because it fails to attract both.
Ironically, Raj Thackeray’s party is friendly with the BJP, which has not given up its demand of a separate Vidarbha state, to which the
Sena is fiercely opposed. Shinde’s Shiv Sena is forced to focus more on ‘Hindu’ Maratha than Marathi manoos to please ‘elder brother’ BJP.
The election, scheduled for November 20, will decide which of the Shiv Senas is the real Sena. Uddhav insists that he is the real inheritor of his father’s legacy and no one else has the right to lay claim to it. Shinde, on the other hand, claims that he is following the brand of Hindutva propounded by Bal Thackeray, who was a staunch opponent of the Congress. Thackeray, by joining hands with the grand old party, has compromised on the ideals and ideology of his late father, Shinde says.
This is the first time that there has been a split in the Shiv Sena, unlike in the past few decades, which saw Chhagan Bhujbal, Narayan Rane, and Raj Thackeray leaving with their supporters. Raj did not cause a split in the party but set up his own MNS.
The MNS’s best electoral performance came in 2009, when it won 13 of 143 contested seats. However, in the next two elections, the party could only manage a single seat each time. In 2019, the MNS secured just one seat but finished as the runner-up in 10 constituencies, signalling its potential relevance in close races this time around.
The assembly seats where MNS came in second are Kothrud, Shivadi, Mahim, Ghatkopar East, Bhandup West, Mulund, Magathane, Thane, Dombivali, and Bhiwandi Rural (Scheduled Tribe reserved).
It would be trouble either for Uddhav or Shinde depending upon who takes the lead among the two Senas in the most fiercely fought
electoral battle in Maharashtra so far.