BJP in Maharashtra hits a political air pocket

The winds of change are blowing in from Karnataka, unsettling the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) which is a coalition partner with the Shiv Sena (Eknath Shinde) faction running the Maharashtra government. The national party has unexpectedly begun to face opposition from both friends and rivals alike.

The Lok Sabha polls are about 10 months away, and the assembly polls could be advanced with it. As the electoral clock is ticking, there are growing apprehensions in the Shinde camp that in the upcoming polls the BJP will give it a raw deal — and there’s not much it can do about it. It’s a sinking feeling.

The May 26 outburst by senior Shiv Sena (Shinde faction) MP Gajanan Kirtikar that the BJP was meeting out ‘stepmotherly treatment’ towards its coalition partner is evidence that the fissures are growing. Kirtikar has said that the Shinde faction must be given 22 of the 48 Lok Sabha seats to contest from in the 2024 general elections. Currently, it has 13 LS MPs.

Both Shinde and his deputy and BJP leader Devendra Fadnavis have sought to calm nerves and signal that all is well. Chandrakant Khaire, a leader from the Uddhav Thackeray faction of the Shiv Sena, added fuel to the fire by claiming that a recent BJP survey showed that the Shinde faction would not win even one of the 13 seats — thus, the hurry to settle seat-sharing among the allies.

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The Shinde-Fadnavis government was formed on June 30, after Shinde led a split in the Thackeray-led party. Shinde had then assured his supporters they had the backing of a ‘national party’, which is likely the BJP — and now the national party is giving leaders in the Shinde faction cause for concern.

Though state BJP leaders, including Fadnavis, have been reiterating that the BJP and the Shinde faction will be fighting the Lok Sabha and assembly polls together, rumour is that the central leadership has asked the state unit to identify party candidates for the 13 seats promised to the Shinde faction.

Shinde is in a tight spot as he cannot afford to deny giving a ticket to any of the 13 MPs who have stood with him — this despite many of them likely facing anti-incumbency. Scepticism is likely to rise among the coalition partners when the BJP raises the issue of winnability of these 13 MPs. The BJP’s alleged attempts to split the Nationalist Congress Party and the Congress in Maharashtra should be seen as its lack of confidence in the Shinde faction’s ability to deliver at the hustings.

Though the ruling coalition holds majority of the 48 Lok Sabha seats in Maharashtra, it is a cause for concern if the Congress-NCP-Shiv Sena Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) further gains strength. The Kasba assembly bypoll results in February came as a shocker for the BJP — after all it held the seat for about three decades.

A section within the BJP is pressing for the holding the assembly polls simultaneously with the Lok Sabha elections to cash in on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s charisma. There are doubts on the BJP-Shiv Sena (Shinde) coalitions performance if it is held as scheduled in October-November 2024.

The BJP’s primary goal was to split the Shiv Sena, and having achieved that with the help of Shinde, does the BJP really need the Shinde faction in the upcoming elections? It’s utility over, will the Shinde faction leader be cannon fodder? The BJP might have made Shinde Chief Minister, but the remote control has always been with the BJP central leadership. This power imbalance was evident — after all the BJP has 105 MLAs, while the Shinde faction has just 40. The tail cannot wag the dog.

That said, the BJP has bungled in its understanding of the Maharashtra political scenario. It had thought that a split in the Shiv Sena would politically marginalise Thackeray, and that the BJP could become the sole proponent of the Hindutva vote bank in Maharashtra. The reverse has taken place, with Thackeray digging in his heels and firmly being supported by the Shivsainks. Similarly, efforts to engineer a split in the NCP was tactfully scuttled by its chief Sharad Pawar.

For the BJP, the political milieu in Maharashtra is getting complicated with every passing day. It is not helping the local leadership that leaders from other parties are being welcomed into the fold without much thought.

(Sunil Gatade and Venkatesh Kesari are senior journalists.)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.