The political scene in Maharashtra has never been so chaotic, as it exists today. Until the 2019 elections, there was a clearly laid out political division. The Bharatiya Janata Party and Shiv Sena, along with smaller parties, on the one side, and the Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) on the other. This traditional combination was disturbed in 2019 when the Mahavikas Aghadi government, comprising Shiv Sena, Congress and NCP was formed. The newly imagined alliance not only formed the government but also ran it smoothly until the BJP disturbed the arrangement by breaking constituent parties into separate factions.
Shiv Sena is now Shiv Sena (Eknath Shinde) and Shiv Sena (Uddhav Bal Thackeray). Similarly, the grand old NCP is now the one led by Ajit Pawar and another by his uncle Sharad Pawar. The split in the parties has also meant that many senior and promising leaders have jumped ships. The Congress party may not have split but many of its senior leaders, including former chief minister Ashok Chavan and former MP Milind Deora, crossed over to the BJP and Shiv Sena (Shinde) respectively.
These mergers, splits and breakaways have only made election campaigns more challenging for the candidates on the ground. Now, as candidates set out to campaign in their respective constituencies, they are no longer focussing on the pertinent issues plaguing their region and the state. “It is all about introducing their new party symbols or the new political party they have newly joined,” says Shakil Ansari, a resident of Kalyan parliamentary constituency, currently represented by chief minister Shinde’s son Shrikant Shinde.
Here, two-time municipal corporator Vaishali Darekar-Rane is contesting as the Sena (UBT) candidate. Kalyan has traditionally been a Shiv Sena bastion and Darekar-Rane is an old, familiar face among Shiv Sena supporters. So is Shrikant Shinde. As Darekar-Rane kickstarted her campaign this time, the focus has entirely been on introducing her voters to the new party symbol a ‘flaming torch’. The original bow- and-arrow symbol went to Shinde’s faction after the Election Commission ruled in his favour.
The NCP (Sharad Pawar) faction has a bigger challenge of taking its party symbol among the voters. The senior Pawar lost the iconic ‘clock’ symbol to nephew Ajit Pawar and only recently took up a Marathi folk musical instrument called Tutaari (trumpet) as the party symbol.
This election is an existential fight for almost all parties. Political analysts say even if the BJP succeeded in creating factions and chaos in the state, it has not translated into the party consolidating itself in the state. Sanjay Patil, a researcher from the University of Mumbai, who closely works on Maharashtra politics and urban informality, points to some important aspects.
A BJP rally. Photo: X/@BJP4India
The BJP, he points out, had emerged as a strong force both in 2014 and 2109. The BJP and Sena combined had polled over 48% in 2014, and in 2019, they had crossed the halfway mark. “But that is not what the party appears to be today,” he says. “You speak to party workers and you know they are just as confused as the party leadership. The Mahayuti partners (Shinde and Ajit Pawar) are looked at as an added burden by party cadres,” Patil says.
The three parties have been struggling to reach a consensus on some of the most contentious seats including South Mumbai, Thane, Palghar, Nashik and Aurangabad. On April 18, the BJP announced that Narayan Rane would be contesting from the Ratnagiri-Sindhudurg seat in Konkan. Sindhudurg has been a traditional Sena seat for over three decades. And this is perhaps the first time the bow-and-arrow symbol would be missing from the fray. A similar tussle is on from the Nashik seat, where Ajit Pawar wants his former minister Chhagan Bhujbal from the constituency but Shinde wants the seat to be retained with his Sena faction. Hemant Godse of Shinde’s Sena is the sitting MP from Nashik.
In Sangli, the Congress is facing a different struggle. Even as the Congress and Thackeray’s Sena are yet to reach any consensus, Congress’s rebel candidate Vishal Patil, the grandson of former chief minister Vasantdada Patil, has gone ahead and filed his nomination. The Congress has now warned him to withdraw his candidature by April 22 (the last day to do so) or face expulsion.
The seat-sharing talks for the MVA too have not been smooth. The dispute over Mumbai South Central, Mumbai North and Sangli still continues. Sangli and Mumbai South Central were allotted to Sena (UBT) who nominated Chandrahar Patil and Anil Desai respectively for the two constituencies. This upset the Congress leadership, including Mumbai Regional Congress chief Varsha Gaikwad, who wanted to contest from the Mumbai South Central seat where her father Eknath Gaikwad was an MP. Unlike other discontented party leaders, Gaikwad had not spoken against the party decision but is not seen campaigning for Desai either.
In a bid to placate Gaikwad, the Sena (UBT) has proposed to the Congress that the party nominate her from the Mumbai North Central constituency. The decision is yet to be made.
Prakash Ambedkar’s Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi (VBA) which was in talks with the MVA until recently fell apart after the latter didn’t give into Ambedkar’s demands of stipulated seats where the party had polled either as second or third in 2019 elections. VBA is contesting separately now. And since its decision to go separate, both sides (MVA and VBA) have taken potshots at each other, sometimes even forgetting their main political enemy, the BJP.
The BJP is heavily dependent on the central leadership for campaign in the state. Not long ago, Nitin Gadkari, Union minister and the party’s candidate from Nagpur had claimed he won’t put up a poster or campaign for himself in the constituency as he’s already a “winning candidate” for the third term. But last week, everyone including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Shinde and Fadnavis was in the constituency campaigning for Gadkari.
Nagpur, along with Bhandara-Gondia, Chandrapur, Ramtek, Gadchiroli-Chimur constituency goes to poll today, April 19. In 2019, the BJP had won three – Gadchiroli-Chimur, Bhandara-Gondia and Nagpur – of these five seats while the undivided Sena and Congress had won Ramtek and Chandrapur respectively.
On the other hand, the MVA too has not been able to make full use of its star campaigners. For instance, Sharad Pawar has kept himself restricted to constituencies in western Maharashtra. Pawar’s daughter and sitting MP Supriya Sule is contesting from Baramati and is pitted against Ajit Pawar’s wife Sunetra Pawar. For both factions, losing this seat could mean the death of their political careers. Also, unlike in the past, where Thackeray was propped as the face of the MVA coalition, the three parties have failed to come together for campaigns this season.
In all the in-fights, Patil says, it is the people’s issues that have suffered the most. “Climate change, drought, water crisis unemployment, farmers suicide which should have been the most important issue this election has completely been forgotten. Both by the ruling coalition and the opposition,” he points out.
