Mumbai: Amid talks of the estranged Thackeray cousins possibly reuniting, politically and otherwise, their parties have drawn a blank in the very first election they contested together.
The Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena and the Raj Thackeray-led Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) joined forces to contest a hyper-local election to the BEST Employees Cooperative Credit Society. The results, announced early on Wednesday, showed that the joint panel led by the Thackeray cousins—known as the Utkarsh panel—lost all 21 seats.
The rival panel of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) celebrated their defeat as if it were their victory. Known as the Sahara Samruddha Panel, the BJP panel led by leaders Prasad Lad and Pravin Darekar won seven seats. A third panel, led by Union leader Shashank Rao and named after him, won the elections with 14 seats.
“Those who went on saying Mumbai is ours, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) is ours, and if we win this election, we will win the BMC elections, have learnt a lesson that the Thackeray brand does not work. More than how many seats I have got, I am happier that the Thackeray brand got zero seats,” Lad said Wednesday at a press conference. “We have 100 percent passed the litmus test.”
The BEST cooperative credit society has 15,123 members, including both current and former employees with the Brihanmumbai Electric Supply & Transport (BEST) undertaking. Most employees are Mumbai-based, Marathi-speaking people, with the election viewed as a small teaser of where the loyalties of the Marathi voter base lie.
The hotly contested election saw a record turnout of at least 84 percent of the members amid allegations made by Shiv Sena (UBT)-MNS members that the BJP-led panel had bribed the members to vote in their favour.
The last election to the committee was nine years ago, when a panel led by Shashank Rao’s father, Sharad Rao, won.
Sanjay Raut, a Rajya Sabha MP from Shiv Sena (UBT), speaking to reporters in Delhi, dismissed the election results as local polls fought between trading unions.
“Elections to such cooperative credit societies are more about the trade unions trying to show their strength. The Thackeray brand will never fail. However, I would not comment on these elections till I have information about them. Elections to cooperative credit societies are not an exam. It is not even a preliminary test,” Raut said, adding that some leaders came together and fought elections. “These elections are not fought on party lines. It is not anyone’s big success or defeat.”
‘Zero plus zero equals zero’
Since the past two months, the Thackeray cousins have shown signs of reconciliation and a possible united electoral battle against the ruling Mahayuti, comprising the BJP, the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena and the Ajit Pawar-led Nationalist Congress Party (NCP). The Thackeray brothers held a massive joint rally earlier in July to oppose the three-language policy proposed by the Mahayuti-led government and the alleged imposition of Hindi.
Leaders from both sides are sending out feelers of a potential alliance for the benefit of the local Marathi population. The BEST cooperative credit committee poll was the first that the two parties joined forces for.
Suhas Samant, a Shiv Sena (UBT) leader who steered the party into the election, said, “Both parties worked for the election. It was an experiment that we tried. The karyakartas of both parties hit the ground running for the campaign. Neither of the two parties is at fault.”
He said that the union of MNS and Shiv Sena (UBT) for the election put the BJP on guard, and the party used all its force and might to ensure the defeat of the MNS-Shiv Sena (UBT) panel.
Union leader Shashank Rao, whose panel won the election, said, “The question is not whether two brothers came together. If you work for the people, they will vote for you, even if you are alone; the workers have shown this.”
He said the Thackeray-led Shiv Sena had always pushed for a pro-privatisation and anti-employee policy in the BEST undertaking. However, BJP leaders, such as Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and state cabinet minister Ashish Shelar, have always aided the cause of BEST, he added.
Lad and other BJP leaders maintained that the cooperative credit committee elections—previously never fought on party lines—were also not contested that way this time.
“The BJP did not back me in this, in any way. The Shiv Sena (UBT) tried to set a narrative. They thought they would get sympathy if they used Raj Thackeray’s name, so they attempted to set a narrative. That boomeranged on them,” Lad told reporters.
After the Shiv Sena (UBT) and MNS drew a blank, the BJP leaders made a concerted effort to target the two parties.
Maharashtra BJP spokesperson Keshav Upadhye, in a social media post, said, “One doesn’t have anything to lose, and the other doesn’t have anything to win. If one adds two such zeroes and puts any number of additional zeroes with it, the mathematical answer will be zero. Even children who have not been to school know this, but what happens when you don’t see it? The answer to this question lies in the election of the BEST cooperative credit society.”
Political commentator Hemant Desai said the Shiv Sena (UBT)-MNS should not have packaged the election as one where the Thackeray brothers were putting up a united front, and one that would be its litmus test.
“No cooperative credit society election had become as high-profile as this one has. The MNS-Shiv Sena (UBT) should not have made the election sound this prominent. Now, it is obvious the BJP will take advantage of their loss. The result is a definite slap for both parties in terms of optics and the morale of the party workers,” he said.
(Edited by Madhurita Goswami)
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