Amit Shah’s Konkan visit just the beginning as BJP signals open war in Shiv Sena bastion
Politics

Amit Shah’s Konkan visit just the beginning as BJP signals open war in Shiv Sena bastion

Shah visited Sindhudurg’s Kudal to inaugurate a medical college and used the platform to launch a scathing attack on CM Thackeray and the MVA govt.

   
Home Minister Amit Shah during the inauguration of a medical college in Sindhudurg on 7 February 2021. | Photo: ANI

Home Minister Amit Shah during the inauguration of a medical college in Sindhudurg on 7 February 2021. | Photo: ANI

Mumbai: After aggressively expanding in the Shiv Sena’s home turf of Mumbai, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is trying to make inroads in the Uddhav Thackeray-led party’s second most important region in Maharashtra — the rest of the coastal belt of Konkan.

While BJP has been working in this direction since 2014, Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s visit to Sindhudurg Sunday signalled an open war with the Shiv Sena in its bastion.

“We have been deliberately trying to expand in the Konkan region for the past few years. With Narayan Rane’s entry, we have especially got a foothold in the Sindhudurg district. Amit Shah ji’s tour to Konkan strongly reinforced the BJP’s commitment to the region,” said Prasad Lad, a BJP MLC who has been looking after the party’s expansion in the region.

Rane, a former Shiv Sainik and an arch nemesis of Maharashtra CM Thackeray, quit the Congress to align himself with the BJP in 2017 and eventually joined the party.


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Amit Shah in Sindhudurg

Shah visited Sindhudurg’s Kudal, Rane’s home constituency, Sunday to inaugurate a medical college run by the Sindhudurg Shikshan Prasarak Mandal, which Rane has established. He used the platform to launch a scathing attack on CM Thackeray and the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government.

Shah said the Shiv Sena had deserted its founder, Bal Thackeray’s ideologies, by allying with the Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) to form the MVA.

The home minister also implied that Thackeray was lying when he told people that the BJP had gone back on its promise of sharing the CM’s post if the saffron alliance came to power after the 2019 elections.

“They [the Shiv Sena] keep saying we have broken promises that we had allegedly given behind closed doors. I would like to emphatically say I have never indulged in ‘closed-door’ politics. I believe in transparency and making all promises on a public forum,” Shah said.

The Union minister also slammed CM Thackeray for not visiting the Ratnagiri-Sindhudurg belt even once when Cyclone Nisarga hit in June 2020, causing damage to homes and livelihoods, even as former CM Fadnavis visited three times and gave regular reports to Shah.

Thackeray had visited Alibaug in the Raigad district after the cyclone, which had made landfall close to Alibaug.

“The Shiv Sena is very much disturbed by the BJP’s work in Konkan. Rane has practically finished the party in Sindhudurg. Senior Shiv Sena leaders here seem to be on the way to the BJP. In Ratnagiri, there is factionalism within the party, and now Amit Shah’s visit has brought an edge to the BJP’s position in Konkan,” Lad said.

Shiv Sena’s Vinayak Raut, MP from the Ratnagiri-Sindhudurg constituency, however, said his party has nothing to be afraid of in Konkan.

“When Amit Shah visited a particular district, it was expected that as Union minister he will make some strong announcements for the district and talk about its development. Instead, he just criticised the CM, Shiv Sena and the government,” he said.

“We are not giving any importance to his visit or what he said over there,” he added.

Almost as a retort, the Shiv Sena Tuesday inducted seven BJP councillors from the Vaibhavwadi municipal council in Sindhudurg, dealing the local BJP unit a blow, and emphasising that the Sena still holds sway over the region irrespective of Shah’s visit.

The seven councillors were said to be supporters of Rane’s son, Nitesh Rane, who responded to the defections by calling the councillors a Valentine’s Day gift from the Ranes to the Shiv Sena.

“Valentine’s Day is just a few days away and the Shiv Sena is our old love, and one must not forget their old love…” the Rane scion said, adding that the Sena is so weak in the region that it doesn’t have its original members to contest polls.


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Konkan — Shiv Sena’s second turf

The Konkan region comprises the two districts of Ratnagiri and Sindhudurg, Raigad, Thane and Palghar, and the two districts covering Mumbai — Mumbai city and Mumbai suburban.

The region has been a bastion of the Shiv Sena since the early days of the party. The Marathi youth from the Konkan region would come to Mumbai in search of jobs and send money back home, making the Konkan region, especially the rural, picturesque districts of Ratnagiri and Sindhudurg, be informally known as the ‘money order economy’.

Back then, the Sena’s pitch was that migrants from outside Maharashtra were grabbing high-profile jobs in Mumbai and snatching opportunities of local Maharashtrians. This cut ice with the job-seeking youngsters from Konkan and their families back home, making the other districts of the Konkan region a second citadel for the party.

Currently, excluding Mumbai and Thane, the rest of Konkan has 21 assembly seats. Of these, the BJP has just three — one in Sindhudurg’s Kankavli, where Rane’s son Nilesh Rane is the MLA, and two more in the Raigad district. The Shiv Sena has 10 seats.

BJP’s efforts at expanding in Konkan

After the Shiv Sena formed an alliance with the BJP in 1989, the constituencies in Konkan always came to the Shiv Sena’s kitty in its seat-sharing arrangements with the BJP. As a result, the BJP had negligible presence in the region, something which the party has been trying to change since 2014 in its attempt to be able to control Maharashtra without having to rely on the Sena.

The party’s visible efforts at eating into the Sena’s base in Konkan started when it allied with Rane, who had fallen out with the Sena after major differences with Uddhav Thackeray and quit the party in 2005 to join the Congress.

Fadnavis’ confidants in the party, Pravin Darekar, leader of opposition in the legislative council, as well as Lad, have been extensively touring Konkan districts to strengthen the BJP’s administrative base there.

One of the BJP’s main pitches in Konkan is the under development of the region, especially Ratnagiri and Sindhudurg, making its youth still depend on nearby big cities for employment.

The former Fadnavis government’s proposed Nanar refinery project in the Ratnagiri district, which the Shiv Sena had stringently opposed, is one of the talking points.

Lad said, “There are a lot of organisations that have now aligned themselves in favour of the project. We are planning to hold a major protest march soon to demand the implementation of the project.”

He said all the work has resulted in the BJP vastly improving tally in the recently concluded gram panchayat elections in the region, especially in Rane’s home district of Sindhudurg.

Sena’s Raut, however, makes light of BJP’s claims. “What does the BJP mean when it says its influence in Konkan is increasing? Only Sindhudurg is not Konkan. It has just three assembly seats, of which too, the BJP has just one.”


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