Shiv Sena’s rural reach, ‘mandate for Uddhav’ — what Maharashtra gram panchayat results show

Shiv Sena emerged as one of the biggest victors of the elections held last week to 14,234 gram panchayats, with the party clinching victory in about 20% of them.

People stand in a queue to vote during the gram panchayat elections in Maharashtra's Ahmednagar district on 15 January 2021 | By special arrangement

Mumbai: The Shiv Sena was largely seen as a party that draws its strength from Maharashtra’s urban pockets. But the recently-concluded election to almost 50 per cent of the gram panchayats in Maharashtra has changed that perception. 

The Shiv Sena emerged as one of the biggest victors of last week’s elections to 14,234 gram panchayats, with the party clinching victory in about 20 per cent of them. 

The BJP, which secured 5,721 gram panchayats, claimed to have topped the elections, a statement that the Shiv Sena as well as its allies in the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA), the Congress and NCP, have dismissed.

However, irrespective of the BJP’s wins, the Shiv Sena has evidently expanded its footprint to rural Maharashtra, changing its image from a party with a largely urban connect to one with an equally strong rural face. 

The gains are also a boost to party chief Uddhav Thackeray, who was criticised for not having a connection with people in his first year as Maharashtra chief minister. 

Shiv Sena’s biggest gram panchayat win so far

Maharashtra has a total of 27,920 gram panchayats, of which almost 50 per cent went to polls last week. Voting took place for 12,712 gram panchayats, while in 1,523 others, there were single candidates, who were declared unopposed. 

Elections to gram panchayats are not contested on party symbols. However, candidates end up being politically affiliated, with every party coming up with a tally for how many gram panchayats it has managed to clinch. 

According to the Shiv Sena’s calculations, the party won in 3,113 gram panchayats, followed by the BJP in 2,632, the NCP in 2,400 and Congress in 1,823. 

The Congress’ data, which though differs in exact numbers as well as its own position in the elections, supported the Shiv Sena’s claim of having won the most number of gram panchayats. According to the Congress, the Shiv Sena won 3,108, followed by the Congress with 2,513, the NCP with 2,399, closely trailed by the BJP with 2,263. 

Meanwhile, the NCP as well as the BJP have raised claims of emerging as the party with the most rural capital out of the election. The NCP has claimed victory in 3,276 gram panchayats, and the BJP stated it had won 5,721 gram panchayats. 

However, irrespective of other parties’ claims about being the single largest in rural Maharashtra, the Shiv Sena is buoyed by just the fact that this is the party’s biggest gram panchayat win so far. 

“This is definitely the Shiv Sena’s best performance at the gram panchayat level so far and changes the party’s image from one with an urban base to a more pan-Maharashtra outfit. We have strengthened our base in Konkan and Marathwada and made deep inroads in parts of western Maharashtra and even Vidarbha,” said Shiv Sena MLC Manisha Kayande. 

The Shiv Sena, however, has been stung by its defeat in pockets of Sindhudurg district with the party’s arch rival Narayan Rane, a former Shiv Sena leader and currently a BJP Rajya Sabha MP, helping the BJP expand there. Sindhudurg, part of the Konkan region, is known to be a strong turf of the Shiv Sena. 

But a few other precious victories helped it pare the loss. For instance, in Kolhapur’s Khanapur village from where state BJP president Chandrakant Patil hails, the Shiv Sena won six of the nine seats under the leadership of its MLA Prakash Abitkar. 

Similarly, party leaders said, though the wins were few, the Shiv Sena also registered a much better-than-expected performance in Vidarbha’s Nagpur district, which has been the BJP’s citadel. The party claims to have won at least ten gram panchayats in the rural areas of the Nagpur district. 

“The Shiv Sena has always had a strong performance in cities such as Mumbai and Thane. Having a rural presence will help in expanding the party’s workforce, get newer people, have a stronger cadre at the grassroots to get the party’s message through to people,” Kayande added.

Big boost to Uddhav Thackeray’s leadership 

The Shiv Sena was launched in 1966 on the plank that migrants were stealing jobs and opportunities in Maharashtra’s cities. However, the agenda did not cut much ice with voters outside Mumbai. It had resonance to a certain extent with voters in Thane and Konkan due to their proximity to Mumbai. 

The party held its first formal adhiveshan (session) in 1984 in Mumbai when it decided that it needed to work for the entire state, beyond Mumbai and Thane. The following year, the party held its annual adhiveshan at Mahad in the Konkan region where it reiterated its agenda to spread across Maharashtra and decided to adopt a wider Hindutva agenda for the same.

Party leaders as well as political watchers said Shiv Sena founder Bal Thackeray tried to tap rural areas with emotive issues, while current president Uddhav Thackeray tried to change this approach in the 2000s by backing issues such as electricity shortage and payments of sugarcane farmers. 

Over the years, he also campaigned in rural Maharashtra on issues such as farm loan waiver and severe agitations over farmers not getting crop insurance — moves that now seem to be paying dividends for the party. 

“Uddhav Thackeray has steered the growth of the Shiv Sena in rural areas. Since the time the Shiv Sena was in the opposition, Thackeray took up issues such as excessive load shedding in villages, and Fair and Remunerative Price (FRP) for sugarcane farmers, which really helped party expand its base in western Maharashtra’s districts such as Satara, Sangli and Kolhapur in recent years,” said political commentator Hemant Desai.

The party’s wins at the gram panchayat level are, therefore, seen as a “mandate” for Uddhav’s leadership as CM, especially in the light of the BJP’s criticism of his ‘work from home’ practice. 

Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, throughout last year, CM Thackeray curtailed field visits to the bare minimum, choosing to hold meetings through video conferencing instead.

“Uddhav Thackeray strategically picked and chose where to go. He travelled to Raigad district after cyclone Nisarga, then to Sangli and Satara after floods destroyed crop produce there. The gram panchayat poll results are a big boost to Uddhav Thackeray,” Desai added.

A Shiv Sena leader, who did not wish to be named, said the Congress and NCP, which had typically dominated the rural fray, have loosened their hold of the grassroots with the concept of cooperative institutions having weakened in the state. 

“Boards of a lot of sugar cooperatives were controlled by the Congress or NCP. A number of these are not doing well and privatisation has increased in the sector. This created space for the Shiv Sena and BJP to grow,” the leader said.

Decisions of the MVA government to purchase record quantities of cotton at minimum support price last year, a scheme to create market-based value chains, the Shiv Bhojan scheme to provide a full meal at Rs 5 have all seemed to help the Shiv Sena a little more than the Congress and NCP, he added.