Mumbai: Moments before they announced their pre-poll alliance for the upcoming Lok Sabha and Maharashtra assembly elections, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) national president Amit Shah and Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray stood shoulder-to-shoulder, flashing the victory sign along with other leaders.
However, while the Sena chief, of late a strident critic of the BJP, is projecting the alliance as a triumph, he will have to walk a tightrope justifying the alliance to party cadres and supporters, and explain why the party agreed to be an equal partner despite repeated assertions of being the ‘elder brother’ in Maharashtra.
For both, Thackeray is likely to rely on the optics of how the pre-poll alliance took shape.
“No one is entirely satisfied,” said a senior Shiv Sena leader who did not wish to be named. “We will watch how things progress now. The alliance was, as they say, majboori ka naam Mahatma Gandhi (the last resort of desperation).”
An ideological ‘win’
According to the agreement between the two parties, the BJP will contest 25 of Maharashtra’s 48 Lok Sabha seats, while the Shiv Sena has 23.
In the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, which the allies contested together, the BJP won 23 of the 24 seats in its kitty, while the Shiv Sena contested 20 and won 18. Four seats went to allies Shetkari Swabhimani Paksha (which has since exited the alliance), Republican Party of India and Rashtriya Samaj Paksha.
The Shiv Sena has made a slight gain in the new seat-sharing agreement. In 2014, the party had given two seats out of its quota of 22 to allies. According to the 2019 pact, the Sena gets 23 seats, including Palghar, which was earlier with the BJP. However, there is no clarity yet on how the other allies are going to be accommodated.
Also read: BJP & Shiv Sena take cover under ‘ideology’ umbrella to clinch pre-poll alliance
Even though the Shiv Sena did not get its wish to secure more seats than the BJP this time, it has claimed an ideological victory in how the alliance was preserved.
On Monday, Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis as well as Thackeray projected the alliance as one formed after the BJP-led state and central governments agreed to find solutions to “issues of public welfare” raised by the Sena chief.
Fadnavis said Thackeray had pointed out several lacunae in the implementation of the farm loan waiver and crop insurance schemes, for which the CM promised to make immediate interventions.
The state government also agreed to the Shiv Sena’s demand to nullify land acquisition proceedings for an oil refinery at Nanar in Maharashtra’s Konkan region and relocate it to a place where there is no local opposition.
Among other things, the CM-led urban development department agreed to approve a decision of the Mumbai civic body, headed by the Shiv Sena, to waive property tax for houses up to 500 square feet in area, an important manifesto promise of the Shiv Sena for the 2017 local polls.
Most importantly, the Shiv Sena demanded that the recent Pulwama attack be “avenged”, and a Ram mandir built in Ayodhya.
“Negotiations and seat-sharing are secondary,” Thackeray said Monday while announcing the alliance. “Issues of public welfare are the most significant. We had taken up the issue of the Ram mandir in 1989 too (when the alliance was formalised) and come together on this agenda,” he added.
“We are coming back to the alliance over the same issue. The mandir should be built as soon as possible. We have Ram rajya, and a country that has Ram rajya should have a Ram temple,” Thackeray said.
“The discussion has been on important public issues and not just on seats and posts,” Fadnavis added.
As far as projecting the Shiv Sena’s heft goes, it certainly helped that Monday’s joint gathering was preceded by Shah’s visit to Thackeray’s residence, Matoshree, for closed-door discussions.
No clarity on CM post but Thackeray hailed as ‘margadarshak’
For the polls to the 288-member Maharashtra assembly later this year, the parties have agreed to first negotiate with smaller allies and then split the remaining seats equally between the two.
In 2009, the last time the Shiv Sena and the BJP contested the assembly polls together, the seat-sharing agreement gave the former 169 seats, while the latter got 119.
The Sena eventually contested from 160, leaving the rest for allies.
When the alliance was first forged in 1989, the understanding was that the Shiv Sena will dominate state politics, while the BJP expands nationally.
However, the tables were turned in the 2014 assembly polls, which the two parties fought independently. The BJP won 123 seats, emerging as the biggest player, while the Sena got 63. A reluctant Sena later lent support to a BJP-led government, saying it wanted to keep Maharashtra stable.
This time, the Shiv Sena was pushing for a 50:50 split of the 288 assembly seats, with a Sena chief minister at the helm, multiple Sena sources said.
Political watchers as well as leaders from both parties said agreeing to a 50-50 split was a climbdown for the BJP, too, considering its current strength in the state.
Meanwhile, negotiations over the CM’s post continue. On Monday, neither Fadnavis, nor Shah or Thackeray explicitly spelled out which party gets to keep the CM’s post if the saffron alliance wins.
“We insisted on having the CM post for all five years in our closed-door talks, but the BJP was not willing to concede our demand. They agreed to consider sharing the post for half the term,” a senior Shiv Sena leader said.
A BJP insider, however, said that sharing the CM post for 2.5 years each was unlikely, and that the party would mostly accommodate the Sena by appointing a deputy CM.
Amid this tug of war over the top post, Fadnavis hailed Thackeray as a key adviser to the government, saying it was a role he would always hold.
“Over the past 4.5 years, the Shiv Sena chief has given us his constant margadarshan (guidance),” the CM said Monday. “I have often secretly called him for advice on various issues on many occasions. That will always continue.”
“Now, maybe,” Thackeray added, “We won’t need to hold secret meetings any more for the government to take my advice.”
Also read: Shiv Sena-BJP quarrel goes back to elder brother being outperformed by chhota bhai
May the margdarshan in future be as sweet as shrikhand and puran poli …