Days before the bypoll, late BJP MP Wanga’s family joined the Sena, and his son was given a ticket. The BJP has accused the Sena of going behind its back.
Mumbai: Warring allies Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Shiv Sena will have their first electoral slugfest in the run up to the Lok Sabha and Maharashtra assembly polls in 2019 this month, in the form of the Palghar parliamentary bypoll on 28 May.
The seat fell vacant after the death of BJP MP Chintaman Wanga. The BJP was expecting the Shiv Sena’s support for this seat on compassionate grounds. The Shiv Sena, however, stumped its ally when it inducted Wanga’s two sons and wife into the party last week, and named one of the sons, Shrinivas, as its official candidate Tuesday.
Hours later, the BJP poached Congress’s Rajendra Gavit, a senior leader from Palghar, and recommended him to the party’s central parliamentary board as its candidate for the bypoll.
Relations between the two allies have become increasingly choppy, with the Shiv Sena having resolved to contest all upcoming elections independently. The BJP has, however, been making overtures to its ally, while the Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) have rekindled their old alliance.
Fresh tussle
The BJP has accused the Shiv Sena of going behind its back to induct the Wanga family. Chief minister Devendra Fadnavis had informed the Sena leadership of the BJP’s intention to field Wanga’s son as its candidate.
Fadnavis told reporters: “Chintaman Wanga helped the BJP grow in Palghar and worked hard for the party to be elected there. If the BJP cannot retain the seat after Wanga’s death, he will never forgive us. Fighting and winning Palghar will be a fitting tribute to our leader. Come what may, the BJP will win this seat.
“My clear opinion is that the Shiv Sena should not have behaved in this manner, quietly inducting the family, keeping them at an isolated location so that no one could contact them for five to seven days. This, despite us having discussed everything clearly with them. I still have expectations from the Shiv Sena, though. They should stand behind us and support our candidate.”
The Shiv Sena has, however, maintained that the Wanga family was being sidelined by the BJP and was disgruntled, and that is the reason they approached the Shiv Sena.
Pratap Sarnaik, Shiv Sena MLA from the neighbouring Thane district, said: “The BJP is saying it intended to take the Wanga family into consideration and give one of them a nomination, but the reality is it did not. Our only stand is that the Shiv Sena is supporting the BJP at the state and the Centre; the least the BJP should have done was to support the family of its own MP.”
He also added that every party seeks opportunities to grow itself, and this will be an indication of things to come in 2019.
Speaking to television channels, Shiv Sena minister Eknath Shinde said: “The Shiv Sena is not contesting this election for victory or defeat. We are contesting from a sentiment to respect the Wanga family’s wishes.
“In this state, we have always seen that when a public representative dies, a family member is given the nomination to contest the seat, and all parties help that candidate to win. Our party chief Uddhav Thackeray stood firmly behind Shrinivas Wanga without seeing the party or the flag, and I appeal to all political parties and leaders to give him their blessings.”
The Palghar seat
The Palghar parliamentary constituency primarily comprises tribal areas, and is also home to the state’s tribal development minister, Vishnu Savra, from the BJP. A number of big-ticket projects of the Narendra Modi-led government, such as the Mumbai-Ahmedabad bullet train, the Mumbai-Vadodara expressway, the Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor etc. cut through this constituency.
Gavit, the BJP’s proposed candidate, is a former MLA from the Palghar assembly constituency, and was a minister of state in the erstwhile Congress-NCP government. Incidentally, he comes from the only part of the Palghar Lok Sabha constituency where the Shiv Sena is strong.
Of the six assembly segments that comprise the Palghar Lok Sabha seat — Palghar, Dahanu, Boisar, Vasai, Nalasopara and Vikramgad — the Shiv Sena has a strong presence only in Palghar, where Gavit broke the party’s nearly 20-year streak in 2009. Although he lost to Shiv Sena’s Krishna Ghoda in the 2014 assembly polls, it was by a slim margin of 515 votes.
Otherwise, the Palghar parliamentary constituency is largely a stronghold of the local Bahujan Vikas Aghadi (BVA) and also has a strong Leftist presence. The Congress and BJP too have been strong in the Dahanu and Vikramgad assembly constituencies respectively.
The BVA and Congress also plan to contest the Lok Sabha bypoll.