Mumbai: “Eknath Shinde is trying to establish a rule of goons in the state. If he remains the CM, then lawlessness will increase… He has made me a goon, too. Shinde has betrayed Uddhav Thackeray and he will betray BJP too. He has deceived me too,” Kalyan East BJP MLA Ganpat Gaikwad told a Marathi local news channel on 2 February.
The BJP legislator is in the news after he fired at Shiv Sena leader Mahesh Gaikwad inside a police station at Thane’s Ulhasnagar area barely hours before he spoke to the Marathi news channel on 2 February. Now in prison, the Kalyan East MLA said that he picked up the gun because of an ongoing dispute over a land deal.
However, this episode goes beyond just an isolated feud between the Gaikwads and, rather, points to the tension simmering between BJP and Shiv Sena in Kalyan-Dombivli as well as Thane district, which is the backyard of Chief Minister Eknath Shinde.
Equations turned awkward when the two parties joined hands in June 2022 to form the government in Maharashtra, and party workers are said to be still bitter. Indeed, once the planning begins for Lok Sabha seats, the CM’s own backyard is likely to see intense negotiations since both the Shiv Sena and the BJP are on strong footing there.
The NCP, too, has a significant presence in the area. NCP’s Jitendra Awhad, a three-time MLA of Mumbra-Kalwa in Thane district, is an archrival of Shinde.
Sources within the BJP tell ThePrint that the stature of Kalyan MP Shrikant Shinde rose after his father became the CM and so did his interference within the constituency.
Repeatedly, there were speculations that Kalyan would go to the BJP. On Sunday, Shrikant Shinde at a programme arranged by Yuva Sena in Thane repeated that he is ready to work for anyone the alliance chooses for Kalyan. “If someone tells me that there is a better candidate in my place and I have to work to make that candidate win, I will do that,” he said.
However, the NDA has not yet finalised seat sharing as well as a candidate, but in December — buoyed by BJP’s electoral success in Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan — Gaikwad repeated his demand that the party field its candidate from Kalyan.
“Kalyan or Thane district for that matter has always voted for the Right. This district is saffron and no matter who stands a candidate there, they will vote for PM Modi,” cabinet minister and BJP’s Dombivli MLA Ravindra Chavan told ThePrint.
Before Shinde made Thane district his backyard, Shiv Sena leader Anand Dighe used to call the shots. The tussle between the Sena and the BJP can be seen in the state election results. For instance, Thane city was with the Sena in 2009 and went to the BJP in 2014 when the two parties contested separately. The BJP retained the seat in 2019.
For a long time, the BJP has been building a base in Thane district to fight against the Sena, political analyst Prakash Bal said. “Their core workers are being trained to defeat the Shiv Sena. Now at a higher level the alliance has taken place but at ground level, it is difficult for leaders to adjust themselves and repercussions are seen in Ulhasnagar firing.”
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Anand Dighe: Thane’s Thackeray
Thane holds special importance in the Shiv Sena’s history. It was Thane city that gave the party its first political success in 1967 when it won 17 out of 40 seats in the civic polls there. Anand Dighe is largely credited with expanding the Sena’s roots in Thane and its neighbouring regions, including Kalyan, Dombivli, Ambernath, and Bhiwandi.
Dighe first became Shiv Sena’s Thane district chief in the 1980s and spread the Hindutva ideology, cementing the party’s base and winning several elections.
In Thane, Dighe built a persona on the lines of Sena supremo Bal Thackeray. He was to the people of Thane what Thackeray was to the people of Mumbai and across. Like Thackeray, Dighe never fought an election but his Robinhood image grew to such an extent that when he died in a hospital in 2001, angry Sena workers went on a rampage.
Given a free hand in his area, Dighe groomed Shinde and helped him build his clout.
Shinde, in turn, adopted his late mentor’s style of functioning as well as his looks, including the full beard, and rings on his fingers.
Turf war in Kalyan, Thane
During the alliance in the late 1990s and the first decade of 2000s, the BJP played second fiddle to the Shiv Sena. However, during 2014, when the alliance unravelled for the first time during the assembly election, the rift began to grow. It continued to be a love-hate relationship, a Shiv Sena worker from Thane told ThePrint.
Kalyan Lok Sabha seat was carved out of Thane in 2008. And since then, it has been held by the undivided Shiv Sena.
Thane district comprises four parliamentary seats: Thane, Kalyan, Bhiwandi, and Palghar. Currently, Kalyan is with the Sena, Thane with the Sena UBT, and the rest are with the BJP.
But tensions have been simmering mostly in Kalyan and Thane.
Of Kalyan’s six assembly seats, three are held by the BJP including that of Gaikwad’s Kalyan East. The other three are with the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS), the NCP (Sharadchandra Pawar), and the Shiv Sena.
As far for Thane, four are held by the BJP, one by Shinde himself and another by Pratap Sarnaik, a close aide of Shinde.
And that is why, long before the 2 February firing, the issue of “credit war” between the BJP and the Shiv Sena had been going on in Thane district.
In 2017, just like the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) polls, the BJP and the Shiv Sena fought the Thane municipal corporation election bitterly. The BJP was pushed to the third spot.
However, the situation was a bit different in the 2015 Kalyan-Dombivli Municipal Corporation (KDMC) election. Here, the BJP improved its tally and the Shiv Sena softened its stand.
“There was a lot of mudslinging while campaigning for the KDMC election…but, we need to respectfully accept the verdict given by the people. Whatever happens during the election is temporary and we should let bygones be bygones,” the Saamana editorial had written.
“The MVA formation widened the rift but even after the parties came together again, the bitterness amongst workers remained. However, we have to all work together for the upcoming elections,” the Sena worker quoted above said.
But, the situation is far from ideal. In 2022, post the Mahayuti alliance formation, the BJP started working on 16 Lok Sabha seats in Maharashtra which it identified under its Mission 144. Kalyan was one of those parliamentary seats. Union Minister Anurag Thakur visited the constituency and told the BJP workers to focus on infrastructure since Kalyan-Dombivli is a part of the Smart City Mission and promised funds.
This made many MPs from the Shinde camp jittery.
Last year in June, the Sena placed a full front-page advertisement in newspapers claiming more people wanted to see Shinde as the chief minister instead of the BJP’s Devendra Fadnavis. The advertisement had ‘Modi for India, Shinde for Maharashtra’ written in bold letters.
Another BJP leader Sanjay Kelkar from Thane reportedly said at a party conclave that many from his district, including those of allied parties, had won because of Modi, and that there is no one other than the BJP that can get elected in the whole of Thane, Kalyan, and Palghar due to the its ground work.
That same month, BJP leaders from Kalyan passed a resolution that they would only back a candidate from their own party, after a case was registered against one of their workers over a conflict with Sena workers.
Though both sides patched up later, the discontent continued to brew.
It forced Shrikant to issue a statement: “Some leaders from Dombivli are trying to create obstacles for the alliance for their selfish politics. I have no desire for any post. I will back whichever candidate the senior leadership of the BJP-Sena decides.”
But the leaders have come a long way since then, said political analyst Abhay Deshpande. “It seems there is a truce between the leaders that since they have to fight the elections as allies, they have to keep the differences away and move on,” Deshpande told ThePrint.
But what about karyakartas? “The bitterness will be difficult to shoo away. For long, they have been fighting against each other to establish their supremacy over the other,” said Prakash Bal.
Credit ‘war’
BJP insiders told ThePrint that party workers as well as leaders are miffed with Shrikant Shinde’s functioning. “Even if it was a small inauguration, say a public toilet in our constituency, Shrikant would come to take the credit,” said a BJP worker from Kalyan.
Despite being in alliance, BJP MLA from Dombivli Ravindra Chavan had announced in September that the Kalyan-Dombivli mayor will be from the BJP. In fact, Gaikwad had told the media that Eknath and Shrikant Shinde are “suppressing BJP workers in Maharashtra”.
“The father-son duo is overbearing. They don’t do any sort of compromise. They want to have their imprint everywhere and the effect is seen within the local BJP leaders. So there is a heartburn and resentment at ground level,” Prakash Bal said.
As the BJP is announcing its candidates for the Lok Sabha elections, the Sena is hopeful that Shrikant Shinde will be fielded again from Kalyan.
“There is no other alternative to Kalyan than Shrikant Shinde,” former Thane mayor Naresh Mhaske told ThePrint. “There won’t be an issue of any ticket here.”
The issue of the Gaikwads is personal and nothing related to the party, the Sena leader added. “We have started our programmes and BJP district leaders are also attending it. So, I don’t see there is any issue between the parties.”
Although the Sena is confident, the BJP has still not revealed its plan for Kalyan.
“The voters will vote looking at the Centre’s policy; so anyway, they will not look for a particular candidate before voting. So whoever is the candidate, they will vote for the alliance and not for any particular candidate,” BJP MLA Chavan told ThePrint.
(Edited by Tony Rai)
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