Maharashtra: Political history
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BJP- Shiv Sena alliances
Ambarish Mishra, Sena won’t ally with BJP in 2019 polls, January 24, 2018: The Times of India
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From: Ambarish Mishra, Sena won’t ally with BJP in 2019 polls, January 24, 2018: The Times of India
See graphic:
Seats, contested and won- Lok Sabha elections (1991-2014) and Assembly elections (1990-2014)
Shiv Sena, BJP’s oldest — and for 25 years its sturdiest — ally, announced it would go solo for Lok Sabha and Maharashtra polls in 2019. While Sena’s newly constituted national executive passed a resolution to this effect, Sena president
“This regime thrives only on hollow ad campaigns. It needs to be brought down,” Uddhav said at a party conclave that saw his son, Aaditya, being elevated to the status of a ‘neta’ in Sena.
Sena to poach Hindutva radicals
Though Sena is not withdrawing from the Modi government or the BJP-led state government as of now, its stand, and especially Uddhav’s call to defeat the Modi regime, is certain to worsen Sena-BJP ties, rocky since mid-2014, and raise doubts over Sena’s role in the BJP-led NDA at the Centre.
Though the allies fought the 2014 LS polls unitedly, Matoshree snapped ties with BJP for the October 2014 state elections, only to later join the Devendra Fadnavis-led government as BJP’s junior partner. The tie-up came apart again for the 2017 Mumbai civic polls where BJP fell just 2 seats short of the Sena tally.
Uddhav also spelt out Sena’s expansion plan with militant Hindutva as its plank. Addressing party functionaries at the Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel stadium in Worli, he said, “We will expand across the country. Hereafter we will contest every election in every state with Hindutva as our mantra,” he said.
Uddhav’s gameplan is to poach on the radical quotient in the BJP- R-S-S ahead of the 2019 polls by flaunting aggressive Hindutva and projecting BJP as a feeble party with little or no legitimate claim to Hindutva, said Sena watchers. They pointed out that a section in the Sangh Parivar is unhappy with the Modi regime for being “soft” on issues such as Kashmir, Ram Janmabhoomi, Article 370 and even triple talaq.
The Sena also passed a resolution to win “at least 25 LS seats (out of 48 in the state) and 150 assembly seats (out of 288)” in 2019.
Raising the Kashmir issue, Uddhav said the nation needed an aggressive leader like Sardar Patel. In a dig at PM Modi who routinely heaps praise on India’s first home minister, he said, “Had the Sardar been alive today, he would have resolved the Kashmir issue and also the Pakistan issue once and for all.”
Uddhav also criticised Modi for taking Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu to Ahmedabad for a kite-flying session recently. “Why Ahmedabad? The PM should have taken his Israeli counterpart to Srinagar to hoist the national flag there,” he said.
Accusing the Modi government of issuing “hollow threats” to Pakistan, Uddhav said those in power have no empathy for Indian soldiers killed along the border and in terror attacks. “It’s high time the Pakistan problem is put to an end forever. But our leaders have become ‘mastawaal’ (power-drunk and reckless),” he said.
He also slammed Union minister Nitin Gadkari for being critical of the Navy and chided state BJP minister Chandrakant Patil for praising the Kannada language in Belgaum, an area at the centre of the Maharashtra-Karnataka border row. “Patil should have spared a thought for Marathis who have been living along the border,” said Uddhav, indicating that along with Hindutva, the Sena would also sharpen its Marathi plank.
Highest, lowest margins of victory
Assembly elections
2014
From: Oct 1, 2019: The Times of India
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The highest and lowest margins of victory in the assembly elections, 2014
Women
1962-2014: Women MLAs
Bhavika Jain1, Sep 28, 2019: The Times of India
From: Bhavika Jain1, Sep 28, 2019: The Times of India
Women comprise nearly 50% of the total voter base in Maharashtra and yet represent just 7% of the current Vidhan Sabha strength.
Of the 288 seats of the Maharashtra assembly, 20 are occupied by women today. This abysmal figure, though, is still a record for the highest number of women MLAs in the state.
An analysis of women’s representation in the Maharashtra Vidhan Sabha shows that while female voters are increasing steadily, parties are still shying away from fielding women as candidates.
In the 2014 elections, of the total 4,119 candidates in the fray, 277 were women, 20 of whom won. This is still an improvement over 2009, when there were just 11 women in Vidhan Bhavan; 211 women had contested then.
“We have been agitating within the party, even though multiple forums have been seeking more tickets for women. They talk about winnability but if parties don’t allow women to contest, how can they prove that they can win elections? It’s still a male-dominated space,” said BJP spokesperson Shaina NC. She said handing out tickets to daughters, wives or daughters-in-law of senior male politicians does not do justice to women workers.
A senior woman politician said though the number of women voters is rising, there is a question over how many choose a candidate on their own and are not influenced by the political views of their husbands and sons. “The day a woman’s vote is not influenced by her male relatives and she votes for a female candidate putting her trust in her to raise her issues, that’s when parties will be forced to give equal representation to women,” said the politician who has served for 25 years.
In 1972, there was not a single woman MLA in Maharashtra. Of the 56 women who contested not one won, even though there were 1.3 crore women voters, of whom 71.3 lakh voted. In 1967, nine of the 19 women candidates won. Likewise, in 1962, 13 of 36 women candidates won. Over the past four assembly elections from 1995 to 2009, only 11 to 12 women were elected in each term. The highest number till 2014 was 19 in 1980 or 6.6% of the total strength.
“The is a need for parties to give more opportunities to women working with them,” said Yashomati Thakur, a Congress secretary and MLA from Teosa. She said there is only one woman with a cabinet rank in the state government—Pankaja Munde. “This says a lot,” she said.
2018
Sena backs Cong for by- poll
Prafulla Marpakwar, Sena backs Congman for Maha bypoll, May 11, 2018: The Times of India
Shiv Sena has supported the candidature of a Congress nominee, Vishwajeet Kadam, for the May 28 Pulus-Kadegaon assembly bypoll. The BJP has fielded Sangram Deshmukh.
Sena said it was a gesture by party chief Uddhav Thackeray since Kadam is the son of late senior Congressman Patangrao Kadam. “It’s a tradition of the Sena. Whenever the son or daughter of a deceased legislator contests a bypoll, Sena lends support,” said a party spokesman.
Maharashtra legislative council biennial elections
BJP & Sena win 2 seats each, NCP 1 in MLC polls, May 25, 2018: The Times of India
From: BJP & Sena win 2 seats each, NCP 1 in MLC polls, May 25, 2018: The Times of India
The BJP and Sena bagged 2 seats each and the NCP picked up 1 seat in the Maharashtra legislative council in the biennial elections. Counting of votes has been deferred in 1 constituency.
The Raigad-RatnagiriSindhudurg seat was won by NCP candidate Aniket Tatkare, son of former minister and NCP heavyweight Sunil Tatkare, by defeating Sena’s Rajiv Sable. Aniket secured 620 votes against Sable’s 306. In the Amravati seat, minister of state (industries and environment) Pravin Pote secured 458 of the 488 votes polled. Congress nominee Anil Madhogadhiya managed to get 17 votes. “I thank all the voters for reposing their faith in me.
It is avote to the leadership of BJP in the state and at the Centre,” Pote said. In Wardha-Chandrapur -Gadchiroli, the tussle was close between BJP’s Ambatkar, who bagged 528 votes, and the Congress nominee Indrakumar Saraf, who got 491 votes. In the the Parbhani-Hingoli local self-governing body constituency election, the Shiv Sena sprang a surprise despite the numbers favouring the Congress-NCP combine.
Viplav Bajoriya of Shiv Sena defeated Suresh Deshmukh of Congress by a margin of 35 votes in the local selfgoverning body constituency election for Parbhani-Hingoli districts with the help of crossvoting. Viplav, who is the son of Sena’s sitting MLC Gopikisan Bajoriya from Akola-Buldhana-Washim local bodies’ constituency, secured 256 votes as against 221 received by Deshmukh. BJP’s plans to take on Shiv Sena in the Nashik local selfgoverning bodies constituency polls failed miserably.
Despite being its ally, BJP had decided to vote against the Sena and back the NCP candidate. The move was seen as a retaliatory step since Sena had fielded a candidate for the Palghar Lok Sabha bypolls.
Shiv Sena candidate Narendra Darade defeated NCP nominee Shiva-ji Sahane by a margin of 167 votes. Meanwhile, the Election Commission has deferred counting in the Osmanabad-Latur-Beed seat over legal wrangles.
The deadlock over counting of votes for the election continued on Thursday, when the Aurangabad bench of the Bombay high court scheduled the hearing of review petition in the matter before the regular bench on June 6
2019
Assembly elections: How a ‘no-contest’ became a strong contest
Vaibhav Purandare & Ambarish Mishra, Oct 26, 2019: The Times of India
At the height of the assembly poll campaign, CM Devendra Fadnavis invoked the Fuhrer-like mustachioed jailer from the 1975 Bollywood classic ‘Sholay’ with his “angrezon ke zamaney ke” pretensions. NCP chief “Sharad Pawar is like this jailer, saying “ Aadhe idhar jaao, aadhe udhar jaao, bache woh mere peechhe aao(Half the cops can move here, the other half there and the rest, stand behind me),” the CM said, recalling actor Asrani’s famous line.
Portraying the poll as not just an unequal contest but a non-contest didn’t cut much ice with Maharashtra’s voters, who placed the BJP-Sena alliance across the winning line for sure but not before making it clear that this was no one-horse race.
The hype around the “220-plus” target set by the BJP-Sena combine has understandably triggered odd reactions after the results: the saffron winners are shaken and in a sulk; the “defeated” NCP and Congress are in a celebratory mood.
This part-setback for the ‘yuti’ and bounceback for NCP-Congress brings in its wake the prospect of a possible erosion of authority and clout for CM Devendra Fadnavis and Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray, both of whom had publicly stated that the saffron camp had no opponents worth the name.
In the run-up to the polls, many of Pawar’s closest aides deserted him more swiftly than did the gaonwale ofSholay when Gabbar’s men came calling on their scary horses, but the strategy of engineering defections of netas it had once described as tainted and unruly fief-holders significantly diluted BJP’s anti-corruption narrative. At the same time it sparked largescale rebellion, with Fadnavis unable to rein in the rebels despite issuing a stern warning at a presser that those who didn’t withdraw from the fray “would be shown their place”.
Moreover, it nullified gains that may have accrued from the Maratha quota the Fadnavis government granted the state’s nearly 30% Maratha population. If the Marathas of western Maharashtra and Marathwada welcomed the fulfilment of their demand, they looked askance at the targeting of Pawar right through the campaign.
Farm distress, the overall state of the rural economy and the aftermath of the floods made BJP all the more vulnerable to anti-incumbency in western Maharashtra, allowing Pawar to accuse it of sidestepping local issues.
Similar charges were hurled by the opposition in the arid Marathwada. However, Fadnavis’s slogan of a drought-free Maharashtra carried the day.
It would be oversimplification to state that the nationalist narrative did not yield results for the ruling party, because most urban areas — except Fadnavis’s hometown Nagpur — sided strongly with the saffron parties and two important regions, Marathwada and Konkan, firmly expressed support for BJP-Sena rule.
The clear takeaway for Sena is that it cannot play ruling ally and opposition at the same time for long. BJP has successfully entered its bastion, the coastal Konkan stretch. Sena’s strike rate across the state is 20% less than that of the Modi-Shah-Fadnavis party (44% as against BJP’s 64%), and BJP is also clearly No. 1 in Mumbai and the wider Mumbai Metropolitan Region for the second time running, having won 16 seats (as against 14 for Uddhav’s party) in the city of Sena’s birth despite having contested fewer seats.
For NCP, it may have helped that long-time “fief-holders” made an exit, allowing some of the alleged “taint” to wash off and for new blood to come in. The ED action against Pawar and Praful Patel enabled the party to come together by invoking “cooperation and not coercion” as the overriding principle of Maharashtra’s politics, the word “cooperation” carrying deep resonance in the western Indian region that built and nurtured the ‘sahakar’ movement.
With the unrelenting onslaught on his strongholds by BJP, Pawar and his party tried to remind their loyal voters of this status and acquired room to project the poll as a straight duel between the BJP brass and the NCP founder.
Why BJP, Sena alliance ended
Nov 12, 2019: The Times of India
Key Highlights
Following poll results, Sena’s continued intransigence was not anticipated
BJP’s view was that succumbing to pressure tactics would seriously undermine its credibility
The party also took a rather hard stance on portfolios and ministerial berths
NEW DELHI: Shiv Sena’s demand for a 50:50 share in ministerial berths, and more so the quest of a “rotational” chief minister, surprised BJP but was in keeping with the steadily deteriorating relations between the Hindutva allies that had eroded trust to the point of constant suspicion. Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray’s remarks following the results that the numbers should “open everyone’s eyes” and that he was prepared to “wait” till a satisfactory arrangement was worked out had an ominous ring. While Sena’s continued intransigence was not anticipated, BJP decided that it would not give in to demands.
BJP’s view was that succumbing to pressure tactics would seriously undermine its credibility. With Sena’s numbers adding to only a little over half that of BJP, sharing the CM’s post was ruled out. The party also took a rather hard stance on portfolios and ministerial berths.
BJP recognised Sena’s bid to restore parity after having lost the leading role in the 2014 assembly elections. The BJP leadership was, however, not prepared to yield ground, perhaps defying expectations that it would be under pressure to form a government. The party decided not to press for negotiations and instead waited it out as the date marking the end of the current assembly approached. The positions of the two parties hardened and the distrust of recent years gained the upper hand as BJP-Sena relations headed south.
While the saffron alliance won a majority, BJP’s under-performance opened a chasm. The anger in BJP ranks is palpable as it is felt that the party gave away too many seats to its partner. The events of the last three weeks indicate that the alliance is unlikely to be repaired. In the unlikely event of the two parties coming together again, the trust factor will be all but missing.
