Maharashtra: A crowded and chaotic political landscape

Ganeshotsava on Saturday will usher in the festival season in Maharashtra. The state will not only celebrate Diwali and Dussehra but will also go to polls – the festival of democracy – and elect the state’s next legislative assembly, all within the next three months.

With the run-up to the assembly elections already on, the state’s polity has never been as fractured as it is now. The ruling Maha Yuti and the opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi have three main parties each, along with several other smaller outfits. There are also quite a few other parties, which are still on the fence and may wait for an opportune time to join either of the coalitions.

The Lok Sabha elections earlier this year did not go well for the ruling Maha Yuti, which has the Shiv Sena led by Chief Minister Eknath Shinde, Bharatiya Janata Party led by Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and the Nationalist Congress Party led by Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar. The ruling coalition could win only in 17 of the 48 parliamentary constituencies in Maharashtra. The Maha Vikas Aghadi, comprising the Congress, Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) and the Nationalist Congress Party (Sharadchandra Pawar), won 31 Lok Sabha seats from the state.

Though Prime Minister Narendra Modi could manage to secure a third term for himself, the results of the Lok Sabha polls made Maha Yuti leaders realise that his popularity could no longer help them sail through the assembly elections, as it had done in 2014 and 2019.

Both sides have multiple claimants to the post of the chief minister. In 2019, the BJP-Shiv Sena saffron alliance projected Fadnavis as the chief ministerial face, though the Shiv Sena claimed that the post would be rotational as Thackeray was given a word by then BJP president and now Union Home Minister Amit Shah. However, the BJP has rejected the claim.

With Shinde and Ajit Pawar aggressively projecting themselves as the chief ministerial face of Maha Yuti, the BJP has decided not to project anyone and go with collective leadership. Besides, Fadnavis faces opposition both from the Maratha and OBC communities, which are going to play a major role in the polls.

In the MVA, the Shiv Sena (UBT) wants a chief ministerial face, however, Pawar, who calls the shots as the seniormost leader, is opposed to it. The Congress too is opposed to it.

“Who was the face during the Emergency? After the election, Morarji Desai’s name came forward. There is no need to demand a CM face now. We will sit together, and after getting the support of the people, we will give a stable government,” said Pawar.

The deals for sharing of seats among the allies may leave several leaders in both Maha Yuti and the Maha Vikash Aghadi unhappy and they are likely to switch sides.

The smaller parties may queer the pitch for the bigger players. Raj Thackeray’s Maharashtra Navnirman Sena is planning to contest 200 to 225 seats across the state. This is likely to be a headache not only for Uddhav Thackeray but also for the Maha Yuti. Dr B R Ambedkar’s grandson Prakash Ambedkar, who leads the Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi, called upon the SCs, STs, and the OBCs to come together and win maximum seats to protect the Constitution and to ensure that the existing reservation system remains untouched. The Aam Aadmi Party is planning to contest in all 36 assembly constituencies in Mumbai. The AIMIM may independently contest 50-odd seats which would impact the MVA.

The agitation led by Manoj Jarange-Patil for reservation for the Marathas and the resistance led by Laxman Hake against the move to give the Kunbis a share of the OBC quota will impact the outcome of the polls. If they both field independent candidates, the political landscape is likely to be more complex.

The last five years have witnessed intense caste politics with Jalna becoming the hub of the Maratha reservation stir. Manoj Jarange-Patil’s hunger strikes forced the state government to get the Maharashtra State Reservation for Socially and Educationally Backward Bill, 2024, passed by the state assembly, paving the way for 10 per cent reservation to the community, which comprises 28 per cent population of the state and under the Kunbi category of the OBCs. However, veteran OBC leader Chhagan Bhujbal had come out openly against his own Maha Yuti leadership. Prof Laxman Hake of OBC Sangram Sena has emerged as a key opponent of Jarange-Patil.

The back-to-back BJP-engineered splits in the two big regional parties have fractured the polity. In a state where alliances can make or break governments, for Sharad Pawar (83) and Uddhav Thackeray (63), the Vidhan Sabha polls are going to be more challenging, as their original parties are now under the control of Ajit Pawar and Eknath Shinde, who executed coups within their respective parties with the help of the BJP. Thackeray and Pawar cashed in on the sympathy of people during the Lok Sabha polls.

Mega projects like the Vedanta-Foxconn semiconductor project and Tata-Airbus defence aircraft manufacturing project were planned to be set up in Maharashtra but were later shifted to Gujarat. The state also lost the Bulk Drug Park project and the Submarine tourism project, which was shifted from Sindhudurg to Bet Dwarka, a small island off the coast of Dwarka city in Gujarat. However, the BJP has accused Uddhav Thackeray of being opposed to the super refinery project in Nanar and protested after his MVA government shifted it to Barsu.

The BJP-led Maha Yuti would claim credit over big-ticket marquee infrastructure projects like the Nagpur-Mumbai Samruddhi Super-Communication Highway, the Mumbai-Trans Harbour Link or Atul Setu and Coastal Road - as it completed or reaching near completion during its tenure even though two-and-a-half years there had been a Maha Vikas Aghadi rule. On the other hand, the MVA had questioned the need for the Bullet Train project, the dream project of PM Narendra Modi to connect Ahmedabad and Mumbai.

Suicides by farmers, water woes, extended rainfall, unseasonal rainfall, and hailstorms have added to the woes of farmers in the state. The ban on onion exports and lower sugar output had affected the farmers. The farming community could significantly shape voting patterns in the upcoming elections – and gauging the issue is going to pose a litmus test for both alliances. Over the last couple of years, more than 2,000 farmers have died by suicide in the state, particularly in Vidarbha and Marathwada regions.

“There is an agrarian crisis in the state. The Maratha vs OBC reservation issue has widened the rift in the rural areas. The cities have their own problems,” said a senior politician, adding that the reservation issue is likely to cost the BJP dearly as it may face the wrath of both the Marathas and OBCs as the issue has got complicated in the last 10 years when Devendra Fadnavis called the shots. “Besides, we have seen that the sympathy factor has worked for Sharad Pawar and Uddhav Thackeray in the Lok Sabha polls,” the politician added.

“In the last 25 years, Maharashtra only had the Shiv Sena and BJP on one side and the Congress and NCP on the other side. However, now the two alliances have three big parties each and support of several smaller groups. Besides, we have six to eight other parties. What is most important is that the caste division is very wide,” said political analyst Prakash Akolkar. “This is one election that is very difficult to predict,” said veteran political analyst Ajit Joshi. “The situation on the ground may be different. There are no general bodies in the 29 municipal corporations of the state as civic elections have not been since the outbreak of Covid-19. The population involving these corporations is over 60 per cent of the state’s population. There is tremendous resentment among the lower-rung party workers of both the formations,” he added.