Mumbai: Last year’s assembly election gave the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena a major relief. The results gave the party confidence that it was the real Shiv Sena, not just as per the records of the Election Commission, but also as per public mandate.
However, there was one region where that confidence remained a little shaky, and that’s Mumbai, the home turf of the undivided Shiv Sena, the city where it was born and sprung to political prominence.
Now, ahead of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) polls, the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena is plugging holes in its administrative set up for the city, hoping to leave no stone unturned in earning the tag of being the real Shiv Sena in Mumbai as well.
The party has taken several steps this month to strengthen its administrative structure. Firstly, it revamped its administrative structure, expanding the number of vibhag pramukhs (division heads) from the earlier six or eight to 36—one for each assembly constituency in the city. It has named new leaders in all these positions and started training sessions from an election point of view.
A party functionary said, “The Shiv Sena has always had a maximum of eight vibhag pramukhs—in the men’s and women’s wing each. But, Shinde saheb wanted to decentralise the structure further.”
Further, this month, the party has also named seven of its senior leaders as in charge of the six parliamentary constituencies in Mumbai with the Mumbai North East constituency having two supervisors. It has also put in place a team of 21 senior leaders of the party in a chief executive committee headed by party leader and Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Eknath Shinde to oversee preparations in Mumbai.
Since the assembly election, the Shinde-led Shiv Sena has been on a spree of inducting former BMC corporators to the party, hoping to increase the pool of candidates to choose from for the civic poll.
Earlier this week, Shinde addressed a meeting of all former corporators from the party.
According to data from the party, it has 59 former corporations from the 227-member body that was in place from 2017 to 2022. Further, it has 33 former corporators from the 2012-2017 term, and another 14 from the 2007-2012 term.
The BMC elections are likely to be held early next year. The last time polls were held was in 2017 when the Shiv Sena was undivided. The term of that general body lapsed in 2022 and elections have been pending ever since.
“We have started Operation Mumbai in full swing. That’s our main focus now. It is the richest civic body and the state capital. Establishing political power in Mumbai automatically has a ripple effect in the rest of the state. It gives a certain confidence to party workers across the state,” Shiv Sena spokesperson Rahul Londhe said.
Also Read: How Shinde-led Sena went headhunting to fill party posts, even recruiting from rival parties
Focus on consolidating voter base
Party leaders said, the first task that has been assigned to all vibhag pramukhs is to go door-to-door to verify existing voter lists and help get new voters registered.
A senior leader associated with the strategy for Mumbai told ThePrint, “Right now, in Mumbai, the biggest issue from the point of elections is that a lot of buildings and societies have gone for redevelopment. This means, voters could be voting out of the councillor ward boundaries temporarily and will also be getting dispersed, making targeted campaigning for large groups, communities and societies difficult.”
“In a local election, even 60-80 votes in a ward can swing the needle. Once we have the data of exactly where our voters are, we will be able to draw our ground campaign strategy accordingly,” he added.
Industry estimates show that more than 2,000 buildings across Mumbai are currently being redeveloped.
Overall, the Shinde-led Shiv Sena won 57 of Maharashtra’s 288 assembly seats last year, while the Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) won 20 seats. However, in Mumbai, the Shinde-led Shiv Sena managed to win just six seats, while the Shiv Sena (UBT) clinched 10, half of its total Maharashtra tally.
“In the assembly election, we were hit at several places due to the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS), which cut our votes. This time, we have given directions to our local level functionaries to ensure that this doesn’t happen again by consolidating our hold on our voter base,” the above-mentioned leader said.
An analysis of Election Commission data shows, the Raj Thackeray-led MNS cut into the Shinde-led Shiv Sena’s votes in at least seven seats that it lost to the Shiv Sena (UBT). These are Vikhroli, Jogeshwari East, Dindoshi, Kalina, Bandra East, Mahim and Worli.
This time, there are chances of the Thackeray brothers uniting for the civic poll in an alliance between the MNS and Shiv Sena (UBT).
Monitoring by Shinde
In the undivided Shiv Sena, Eknath Shinde, who hails from Thane, was mainly responsible for the party’s affairs in Thane and beyond in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region. Now, for the Shiv Sena under him, he is personally monitoring the party’s growth in Mumbai, taking at least one meeting with the city’s functionaries a week, multiple party functionaries told ThePrint.
Earlier this week, the deputy chief minister addressed a meeting of all party functionaries and former corporators, where he is said to have given specific directions on how to devise campaign strategy to highlight the decisions taken by Shinde when he was chief minister.
“There are at least 42 works that we are expected to highlight when we speak to our karyakartas (workers) and voters. Whether it is the coastal road, Metro projects, slum rehabilitation schemes, redevelopment of large layouts like Kamraj Nagar, it was under Shinde saheb’s tenure that these projects gained momentum for implementation,” a former corporator and a vibhag pramukh of the party told ThePrint.
A Mumbai-based party MLA, said starting this month, Shinde also plans to take parliamentary-constituency wise reviews of the preparation in Mumbai and visit different wards.
(Edited by Viny Mishra)
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