The Maha fight for legacy

THE BJP and its new ally, the Eknath Shinde-led rebel and now dominant faction of the Shiv Sena, passed both the crucial tests required to consolidate their position in the Maharashtra dispensation.

First, the coalition elected its own Speaker, BJP legislator Rahul Narwekar, in a contest that was a breeze but essential to remove legislative irritants, such as reject/revoke the appointments of the Uddhav Thackeray camp’s men as the leader of the Sena legislature group and the chief whip. Narwekar’s election was necessary to quash the Uddhav faction’s appeal to disqualify 16 of the over 40 rebel MLAs who crossed over to Shinde’s side. Narwekar reinstated Shinde, now the CM, as the Shiv Sena’s legislature party leader and recognised the appointment of Bharat Gogawale as the party’s chief whip.

While Shinde will sit comfortably in the Mantralaya, Uddhav stares at an uncertain future that entails the fate of MVA and its ability to hang together in the Opposition.

Uddhav’s dwindling strength was evident in the votes polled to elect the Speaker: Narwekar got 164 votes while the rival candidate secured 107. Monday’s trust vote was even more of an affirmation of how the scales of power tipped to Shinde’s side. The Opposition, comprising the trio of the Sena remnant, the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and the Congress which made up the Maha Vikas Aghadi or MVA, lost the support of eight more legislators. The Shinde bloc had 40 of the Sena’s original 56 MLAs who won their seats in alliance with the BJP in the 2019 Maharashtra elections. It appears that while Shinde, backed by the BJP, will sit fairly comfortably in Mumbai’s Mantralaya, Uddhav stares at an uncertain future which entails the fate of the MVA and its ability, or otherwise, to hang together in the Opposition. Out of power, coalitions rarely coexist because the requisite glue — power — is missing. An allied group can come into being closer to an election or after one when compulsions decree and power exerts a magnetic pull.

However, Shinde has a battle to fight and that is wresting control over the Sena’s apparatuses existing right down to the villages, if he has to get the party’s bow-and-arrow symbol which under the founder, Bal Thackeray, denoted a rambunctious brand of politics that Shinde wants to restore. It’s not enough for him to break off the MLAs.

From all accounts, Shinde wants to appropriate Bal Thackeray’s legacy because that professedly was the rebellion’s intent. An easier option would be to merge his faction with the BJP but that’s something neither Shinde nor the BJP want. The BJP has smarted from the day Uddhav snapped his ties with it and installed himself as the CM with the help of discrepant allies. The BJP not only wanted to reclaim a government in a premier political state (with 48 Lok Sabha MPs and 288 legislators) but also lord over Mumbai, the beating heart of India’s business and industry. More importantly, after irrevocably damaging the Congress and diminishing its status as the country’s principal opposition party, the next prong of the BJP’s attack are the regional parties, particularly those whose leaders look the BJP brass in the eye. Mamata Banerjee, K Chandrasekhar Rao, Sharad Pawar and Uddhav are on the roster of state chiefs who must be felled.

Pawar, the NCP overlord, draws strength and sustenance from Maharashtra but punching above his weight, he has emerged as a national force who, in the past, successfully confronted his parent party, the Congress, and then, made tenuous peace with the leaders to keep himself relevant. Pawar’s ‘national’ position ensured that he figured prominently in an anti-BJP coalition as a philosopher and guide in recent years. Yet, take away Maharashtra and he’s nothing.

In his home state, Pawar’s source of power emanates from his caste, as a Maratha with political, financial and social clout in the sugar belt whose cooperatives are a means of immense patronage. On the other hand, the BJP’s presence in Maharashtra is limited by its inability to grow roots in the sugar belt. Therefore, its best showing, as in 2014 in the aftermath of the Modi ‘wave’, fell short of a majority. It projected Narayan Rane — a former Sainik who fell out with Bal Thackeray, quit, formed his own party and later joined the Congress, and then, the BJP — as a Maratha leader. Rane, who’s a factor in the coastal Konkan region, has not impacted beyond its boundaries. Hence Shinde, also a Maratha, attracted the BJP. Although he hails from Satara in western Maharashtra, he relocated to Thane and started his political career there, mentored by the late Anand Dighe, a grassroots leader with a fan following. The BJP hoped to leverage Shinde’s influence in Thane and Satara and reach out to the Marathas.

Uddhav’s standing is almost pincer-like. Over two years into the government, his colleagues asked whether the Sena’s raison d’etre existed because, according to them, Uddhav softened the rough, almost brutish edge of the Sena’s hallmark politics and made himself acceptable to a politically kosher class in Mumbai. His immediate concern should be saving the Sena from a vertical split and recapturing his father, Bal Thackeray’s legacy from passing into Shinde’s hands. Will he abandon the image makeover he had embarked upon and embrace a hardline ideology?

The Congress was an add-on to the MVA, bereft as it is of a leader and an organisation. In the opposition, the MVA constituents, especially the Sena and NCP, will vie with one another to safeguard and expand their turf. The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation, Pune, Nagpur, Thane and other civic polls, which will be held after the rains, will be the first test for all the players, particularly the two Sena factions, to demonstrate who — Uddhav or Shinde — is Bal Thackeray’s ‘true’ political inheritor.