Multiple parties, trust deficit: Why ‘meet and greets’ are making waves in Maharashtra politics

From Fadnavis and Uddhav's elevator ride together, 2 Congress MLAs meeting Mahayuti leaders, to a least 3 of Ajit Pawar camp meeting Sharad Pawar, every encounter is raising eyebrows.

Maharashtra CM Eknath Shinde meeting NCP-SCP chief Sharad Pawar in Mumbai in July | ANI

Mumbai: On the first day of the monsoon session of the Maharashtra legislature in June, Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and his political rival Uddhav Thackeray found themselves sharing an elevator ride. The ‘non-event’ created ripples in Maharashtra’s political circles, with everyone speculating over what the friends-turned-foes may have spoken about.

But, with Maharashtra polls just about three months away and six major political parties in the fray, such meet and greets, coincidences and absences are piquing the interest of political watchers and obfuscating an already muddled political landscape. 

There have been at least five instances of leaders meeting each other across party lines in the last one month, raising questions, often among their own party persons, of whether these are indications of a churn. 

“Until very recently, Maharashtra’s political culture was such that it was natural for even the staunchest of political rivals to meet each other at personal events or as courtesy calls. In the last four or five years, that has changed. Two parties have split. There is a lot of instability and scope for defections. So, even simple meetings now assume a new significance,” political commentator Hemant Desai told ThePrint.

Desai gave examples of friendships and courtesy meetings between political rivals Mrinal Gore and Sharad Pawar, George Fernandes and Vasantrao Naik, Sharad Pawar and Bal Thackeray and even Gopinath Munde and Vilasrao Deshmukh.

The Shiv Sena suffered a vertical split in June 2022 when Eknath Shinde walked out of the Thackeray-led party along with a majority of MLAs. The Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) split a year later in July 2023 when Ajit Pawar rebelled against his uncle Sharad Pawar with a majority of MLAs in tow. With the split in the two regional parties, there are now two factions each of the Shiv Sena and the NCP that will contest the upcoming assembly polls, other than the two national parties — the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Congress.

“In today’s scenario, these courtesy meetings and chance meetings are also being used by leaders as a bargaining tool, to send a message to their own parties,” Desai said.

Cross-party meet and greets

Over the last one month, at least three leaders of the Ajit Pawar-led NCP have met Sharad Pawar, fuelling speculation over their next move. In this year’s Lok Sabha election, the Ajit Pawar-led NCP had recorded the worst performance of all the six political parties, contesting four seats and winning just one. The Sharad Pawar-led NCP, on the other hand, had the best strike rate, winning eight of the 10 seats it contested.

Last month, Chhagan Bhujbal, a minister in the Eknath Shinde-led Mahayuti government and a senior leader of the Ajit Pawar-led NCP, met senior Pawar to seek his intervention to end clashes between Marathas and Other Backward Classes (OBCs) over the demand for a Maratha quota. Bhujbal has been in conflict with his own government over its decision to grant eligible persons from the Maratha community reservation under the OBC category as Kunbis, and so his meeting with Sharad Pawar added another layer of confusion to the leader’s stand and his next steps.

Besides Bhujbal, two other MLAs of the Ajit Pawar-led NCP — Atul Benke, who represents the Junnar assembly constituency, and Chetan Tupe, who represents the Hadapsar constituency in Pune district — also “casually” met Sharad Pawar. 

Tupe, who shared the stage with Pawar Sunday, told reporters, “The programme was not political. It was organised by the Satara Mitra Mandal, which does a lot of work in my constituency. I went as a public representative.” 

Similarly, Benke, who met Sharad Pawar at the residence of Shirur MP Amol Kolhe, who is with the NCP (Sharadchandra Pawar) faction, told reporters after the 20 July meeting that he went to welcome Sharad Pawar as an MLA and that the Pawar and Benke families have known each other for decades.

He, however, attempted to thicken the plot by adding that there is still a lot of time for assembly polls. “Anything can happen…Ajit dada (Ajit Pawar) and Pawarsaheb (Sharad Pawar) may come together.”

In his own interaction with reporters, Sharad Pawar tried to play down the meeting with Benke. He said there was nothing new in Benke going to meet him. But, on questions over whether MLAs who had walked away with Ajit Pawar are likely to join the Sharad Pawar-led faction, the octogenarian left reporters with a cryptic response — “In the Lok Sabha elections, those who worked for our candidates are ours.”

Similarly, Congress MLAs Hiraman Khoskar and Jitesh Antapurkar meeting Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde and BJP Rajya Sabha MP Ashok Chavan, respectively, also stoked political interest. This is especially because the meetings came after indications of seven Congress MLAs having cross-voted in the MLC polls last month. 

Khoskar and Antapurkar both told reporters their respective meetings were about development works in their constituencies. Antapurkar is known to be close to former CM Ashok Chavan who quit the Congress in February this year to join the BJP. Antapurkar, an MLA from the Dealer assembly segment in Nanded district, Chavan’s home turf, had also skipped a key meeting of the Congress ahead of the MLC polls.

Other than these meetings, another official political visit that drew eyeballs was Sharad Pawar meeting CM Shinde to discuss the Maratha quota issue.

‘General lack of trust everywhere’

Congress leader Sachin Sawant said there is a general lack of trust in today’s politics in the state. 

“The reason behind this is the way defections are being orchestrated either by blackmail or rewards. This lack of trust is making it very difficult to have a political conversation, and it is very unfortunate. I don’t know why the leaders who met other leaders did so, but generally with there being a general background of a trust deficit, we are compelled to see the meetings from that prism,” he said.

Manisha Kayande, spokesperson of the Shinde-led Shiv Sena, squarely blamed the media for giving political meetings a conspiratorial flavour.  

She said politicians have relations with each other across party lines on many fronts. “They may be connected through cricket administration bodies, or cooperatives, educational institutions, family businesses and so on. Such meetings across party lines have been common in political discourse, but of late the media has been blowing them out of proportion.”

She, however, agreed that some leaders could be using these meetings to their advantage. 

“Sometimes it is to send a message to their own party. That I may go here and there if you don’t look after me,” Kayande said.

(Edited by Gitanjali Das)