Another ‘sonrise’, Aaditya is Shiv Sena’s CM face

Sunil Gatade
Senior Journalist

Aaditya Thackeray’s entry into electoral politics marks a new phase in the journey of the Shiv Sena. His is the latest ‘sonrise’ on the country’s political horizon where dynasties are dime a dozen despite the trend being frowned upon. Like the politics of the country, the dynasty is a complex phenomenon. It is seen in almost all the parties, including the BJP, but the Congress is a much-maligned lot due to its ‘first family’. 

The omissions and commissions of the regional parties on the score are generally overlooked because their relevance is not important nationally. At the same time, it is equally true that these parties have failed to grow much due to the hold of the leader and his family.

Barring the Left parties, the dynasty syndrome is being witnessed all over the political spectrum  where the belief is that if the son of a halwai does not become a halwai, what will he become? Wily politicians all over have exploited this belief for furthering their interests, Sonia Gandhi included.

Now, the 29-year-old Aaditya is the first Thackeray to contest an election and the Sena is projecting it as if he would straightaway fly from Worli to the sixth floor of the Mantralaya to become the next Chief Minister of Maharashtra.

It is an undeclared coronation for Aaditya at a time when the issues of Marathi Manus and Hindutva have been put on the backburner and the party has willy-nilly become an appendage to the Modi-Shah bandwagon. 

An arts and law graduate, Aaditya is a poet-turned-photographer-turned-youth leader of the Shiv Sena. He has taken up green causes and had focused on education and employment as Yuva Sena chief. Ever since the Shiv Sena was founded by the late Bal Thackeray in 1966 on the ‘son of the soil’ issue, no member of the family had either contested an election or held a constitutional post.

Ambition makes the man. That is why it is good that the young leader has big dreams. But detractors of the Sena wonder as to how Aaditya could become the CM when his party was contesting just 124 of the 288 seats in the Maharashtra Assembly, well short of the halfway mark. Therein lies the rub. The fact is that the Sena has been forced to accept the junior partner’s status with the BJP. By pitching Aaditya as the CM face, the Sena wants to charge up its cadre to go the extra mile for the best result possible at a time when the BJP led by CM Devendra Fadnavis is the hot favourite.

The 49-year-old Fadnavis is a canny politician who has ensured that there is an alliance with the Sena. This is despite the fact that a powerful section in the party, including some central leaders of the BJP, were pitching for a ‘go-it-alone’ strategy to further marginalise the Sena.

Now, the Sena is a pale shadow of its former self when Bal Thackeray was at the helm and used to declare that he was the ‘remote control’ of the Sena-BJP government. That was way back in 1995. Much has happened since the exit of the Sena-BJP government in 1999.

The contribution of Uddhav is that he steadied the Sena ship in the choppy waters after the death of his father Bal Thackeray who was long referred to as the ‘Hindu Hriday Samrat’. Modi got the title much later. Thackeray’s hold was such that within hours, he could effect a total Mumbai bandh.

Maharashtra has generally remained with the national mainstream as no regional party had ever been able to come to power on its own. Neither the Sena could come to power on its own nor Sharad Pawar’s NCP. The Progressive Democratic Front government formed by Pawar in 1978 was an alliance government which included the breakaway Congress faction headed by him along with the then undivided Janata Party which was then ruling at the Centre. 

Till May 2014 when Narendra Modi became the PM, securing absolute majority for the BJP, Maharashtra was known as a Congress-minded state. In 1999, the bastion suffered cracks when Pawar parted ways on the issue of Sonia Gandhi’s foreign origin and since then, it has been a downhill journey.

In the changed scenario, the Sena is gasping as it has been left far behind by the BJP since Modi and Amit Shah took over. The projection of Aaditya as the CM candidate by the Sena is also a signal that in the days to come, the young leader will shoulder more responsibilities of the organisation. Uddhav had undergone angioplasty a few years back and since then, he has made systematic efforts to ensure the greater involvement of Aaditya in the party affairs.

The Sena’s influence in Mumbai is going down and the last Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation elections showed that the BJP has caught up with the Sena there. The Sena has had a hold over the BMC for over three decades, with the BJP as its junior partner. 

A political observer even cautioned that the next time, Aaditya could face defeat in Worli if the party failed to take steps to stop the migration of Marathi-speaking people from the megapolis to outside Mumbai.

Given the fact that the BJP had secured 122 out of a total of 288 seats in the Maharashtra Assembly last time, it remains the hot favourite now. The Sena and its leader would have to at best settle for the Deputy Chief Minister’s post.

The BJP has been projecting Fadnavis as its CM candidate. In a setback to Fadnavis ahead of the Assembly polls, the Supreme Court recently revived a criminal complaint against the BJP leader, alleging that he had failed to furnish details of two pending criminal cases in his 2014 poll affidavit and asked the trial court to consider the case afresh.

The Opposition NCP has demanded that Fadnavis resign and renounce politics while the Congress has said the Maharashtra CM has no moral right to continue. The BJP has announced that Fadnavis would be contesting from his pocket borough of Nagpur city.

The BJP is not perturbed. It is even preparing for the merger of Narayan Rane’s Maharashtra Swabhiman Paksh with it, unmindful of the Sena’s reservations. Rane is a friend-turned-foe of the Sena and was the Sena CM of the state 20 years back. The possible development is a signal by the BJP to show as to who is the ‘boss’ in Maharashtra. 

Aaditya had once remarked, “I think both politics and art come naturally to me.” The coming days and months would be an acid test as he embarks on his journey in the rough and tumble of electoral politics.