Yet another civic poll outreach? BJP woos Mumbai’s Marathi-speaking Hindus with Gudi Padwa display of faith

On occasion of Maharashtrian new year, 1 lakh karyakartas, 9,800 booths, to hoist gudhis — sugar crystals, neem & mango leaves, garland of red flowers, strung on a bamboo pole for good luck.

A Dahi Handi event in Maharashtra | Representative image | Photo: PTI

Mumbai: The Maharashtrian new year, or Gudi Padwa, has become the latest festival to be appropriated by the Bharatiya Janata Party in the state, in an attempt to establish a mass contact exercise as it continues to target the Opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi in the run up to the Mumbai civic polls expected this year.

Gudi Padwa is being celebrated in Maharashtra Wednesday and the BJP has announced that one lakh party karyakartas in Mumbai will display gudhis — sugar crystals, neem leaves, mango leaves and a garland of red flowers, strung on a long bamboo pole and hoisted atop houses — at their homes. The display of gudhis at homes is believed to bring prosperity and good luck.

Gudhis will also be hoisted at 9,800 (party) booths, each of which has an 11-member committee, BJP’s Mumbai unit chief Ashish Shelar said at a press conference Tuesday.

BJP leaders, booth chiefs and activists will also take out a “shobha yatra” (procession) in various parts of the Maharashtra capital on the occasion, Shelar added. The procession will be taken out in Lalbaug, Parel, Worli, Vile Parle, Borivali and Dahisar areas, which have a strong Marathi presence.

“For the past few days, Thackeray’s party and (other) parties from the MVA (alliance) have been trying hard to woo the voters of a particular community, and the gudhi of Hindutva will truly be a befitting reply to this green storm in Mumbai,” Shelar said.

The MVA comprises the Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray), the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and the Congress.

The alliance, led by then Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray, had been in power in Maharashtra till June last year, when a rebellion in the Sena led by present CM Eknath Shinde led to the party to split and the MVA government to collapse. The Shinde faction then went on to form a government in the state with the support of the BJP.

Now, elections to the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) are likely to be held this year and in a bid to wrest control of the corporation from the Shiv Sena (UBT), the BJP has been targeting its core voter base, Mumbai’s Marathi-speaking Hindu population.

The Sena under Uddhav Thackeray had controlled the Mumbai civic body for 25 years, before it came under a state-appointed administrator in March last year after the term of the general body expired.

Politics over festivals 

This is not the first time that politics has been played over festivals by political parties in the state.

The BJP had in the past tried to give out the message that the MVA had suppressed the celebration of Maharashtrian festivals, while the coalition was in power in Maharashtra between late 2019 and June 2022.

Public celebrations of many festivals had been restricted during much of the MVA tenure owing to the Covid pandemic.

Since the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena came to power in Maharashtra in alliance with the BJP in June 2022, every festival, from Dahi Handi to Ganesh Chaturthi to Diwali, has been celebrated on a grand scale by political parties.

The BJP had arranged competitions for Dahi Handi and the Ganesh festival last year, while on Navaratri, a first-of-its-kind Marathi Dandiya was arranged by the party’s Mumbai wing.

The Shiv Jayanti festival earlier this year had also turned into a political event with the Mumbai BJP organising a Shiv Aarti event across the 227 wards of the BMC.

(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)