The Speaker’s Sena is the real Shiv Sena. The Shiv Sena versus Shiv Sena story has entered a new phase with Maharashtra assembly Speaker Rahul Narwekar, an advocate who travelled from Shiv Sena to the NCP to the BJP, pronouncing his ruling that Chief Minister Eknath Shinde-led faction is the real Shiv Sena. With this ruling, the political slanging match could now shift to the election arena sooner or later.
The Speaker’s ruling puts a stamp of approval on the split engineered by the Eknath Shinde group of Shiv Sena, which revolted against Uddhav Thackeray’s leadership, citing his dilution of the Hindutva agenda of the party by forming the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government with the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and the Congress as partners in 2022.
The 288-member Maharashtra assembly requires 145 members to form a government. With the NCP and the Congress holding 98 seats (54 and 44, respectively), the Shiv Sena with 56 seats was crucial to form a government for the BJP with 105 seats. With a split in Shiv Sena and the NCP, the current coalition has 162 MLAs, 17 more than the majority required. Even if the 17 members of the Shinde faction had been disqualified, the government would have survived. But such a decision would have been a shot in the arm for the Uddhav faction, which would have found the power balance tilting in its favour.
With the Speaker’s ruling in its favour and the Election Commission earlier awarding the Shiv Sena name and the popular ‘bow and arrow’ symbol to the Shinde faction, it is possible that the majority of the rest of the MLAs in Uddhav camp would rush to join the “real Shiv Sena” now. Uddhav Thackeray, whose party is now called Shiv Sena (UBT) and has a flaming torch as symbol, will challenge the Speaker’s ruling, though MLAs of his faction have not been disqualified as members of the House. This in fact is a bigger problem for him as these members are free to join the Shinde group and worm their way to the corridors of power.
As of now, the real loser appears to be Uddhav, the scion of the Thackeray family, son of “Hindu Hridaya Samrat” Bal Thackeray, who single-handedly steered the Shiv Sena to power in Maharashtra. When the BJP was adhering to “Gandhian Socialism” (and was reduced to two seats in the Lok Sabha), it was Bal Thackeray who tied his party to the Hindutva pole and won the Aurangabad Municipal Corporation on the promise of naming it “Sambhaji Nagar”, after Shivaji Maharaj’s son. The BJP was quick to realise the potential of Hindutva politics and tied up with Shiv Sena to reach the corridors of power. Ironically, Uddhav squandered his father’s legacy, and resorted to political chicanery at which he was a novice, to say the least. Bal Thackeray too was challenged by his close aides like Anand Dighe and Chagan Bhujbal, but he was able to ward off the challenge from them and steer the party to success by his command over workers and through strategic moves. Uddhav unfortunately is not a patch on his father, who fought the Congress tooth and nail.
Uddhav’s miscalculations
In order to teach the BJP a lesson, Uddhav tied up with the MVA, a strange coalition between parties ideologically poles apart. The split in the NCP hastened the process of making not only the MVA redundant but also took Shiv Sena down with it. With the party tag and symbol gone, his MLAs waiting to desert him, and with the Hindutva plank gone from under his feet, Uddhav is like a leader without party and party without followers. His statement and that of his son that they would fight back offers little or no solace to the few leaders still lingering around in the fond hope that someday, fortune will favour them.
Uddhav will now have to wait for an opportune moment to find his way back to the Hindutva fold. He could have got himself invited to the Ram Mandir event on 22 January and jumped into the Hindutva bandwagon. His misplaced ego would not permit him to beg for an invite and the political string-pullers would want to keep him out of the event to deny him entry into their fold.
The BJP will now face the electorate more confidently with the official “dhanushya baan” (bow and arrow) Shiv Sena on its side and Ram Mandir spectacle lighting its path to victory. It will not be easy for the BJP too to ride the Hindutva wave alone, as the official Shiv Sena’s main plank to split the party was this factor. It will have to provide a clean and corruption-free government, attend to pressing problems of the urban voters and rural farmers’ issues, especially in constituencies where the NCP and the Congress still have exclusive pockets of influence.
There are more than a dozen municipal corporations whose elections will be held in the coming months, including the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) whose budget is bigger than that of a few state governments. The real test for the BJP and the “official” Shiv Sena under Eknath Shinde will be to win the BMC election, likely to be held after the 2024 Lok Sabha election.
But the immediate concern for the ruling coalition partners in Maharashtra will be to ensure that their partnership remains intact and wins all or maximum Lok Sabha seats in the ensuing general election.
Seshadri Chari is the former editor of ‘Organiser’. He tweets @seshadrichari. Views are personal.
(Edited by Prashant)