Mumbai: In the last month, there has been much sparring between cadres of Maharashtra’s ruling allies — the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena. Just last week, BJP Rajya Sabha MP Anil Bonde indirectly taunted Chief Minister Shinde by saying “however much a frog may bloat, it cannot be an elephant”.
An irate Sanjay Gaikwad, MLA from the Shinde-led Shiv Sena, hit back, hailing the CM as a “tiger”, lashing out at the BJP with an oft repeated barb, one used even when the latter was undivided — that the BJP grew in Maharashtra only because of Shiv Sena founder Bal Thackeray, that it would have been nothing in the state had it not been for the Sena.
On 21 June, it will have been a year since a vertical split in the Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena, when Shinde walked out of the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government — that the Sena was part of along with former rivals Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and Congress—with a clutch of MLAs and joined hands with the BJP to honour “a natural alliance”.
At the time, this alliance between Shinde’s rebel Sena and the BJP was projected as one sans the acerbity and squabbles that were inherent in the latter’s relationship with the Uddhav-led party.
A year down the line, this honeymoon period seems to be nearing its expiry date.
Shinde has officially got the tag of being the real Shiv Sena from the Election Commission (EC) along with the party’s symbol of the bow and arrow. He has been the chief minister for almost a year and has, for now, dodged the bullet of disqualification with the Supreme Court’s verdict on a petition by the Thackeray camp putting the ball in the Speaker’s court.
Speaker Rahul Narwekar is a BJP MLA. And he has managed to attract some strong Shiv Sena names to cross over to his side from the Thackeray faction, which definitely helps in optics.
But, the successes mostly end there. Shinde has not managed to bring the entire party with him, BJP leaders say. Members from the Shinde camp also admit that the work of building a new organisation on the ground has been slower than expected. Moreover, clashes between the two ruling alliance partners have become apparent, though leaders from the Shinde camp try to play down the conflicts. “Don’t two siblings fight? But the elders of the house always sort it out. It’s the same here,” an MLA from the Shinde-led Shiv Sena said.
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Sena-BJP once again, a bittersweet bonhomie
Multiple BJP leaders admit off the record that while Shinde’s rebellion was a success, he has not truly managed to bring the Shiv Sena with him.
“Everyone knows that. Even Union Minister Amit Shah knows that, and probably Shinde realises that too. The 40 MLAs who rebelled are unlikely to all get elected once again,” said a senior Maharashtra BJP functionary who wished to not be named. The Shinde-led Shiv Sena has so far not tested its popularity in an electoral battle, not even a bypoll. “That’s why his party leaders are now posturing, trying to flex their muscle,” he added.
The advertisement controversy that made headlines earlier this month — when the Shinde-led Shiv Sena made a full-page splash in Maharashtra’s newspapers touting Shinde to be a more popular choice for CM over BJP’s Devendra Fadnavis — is testimony to that. The advertisement, which a minister in the Shinde camp disowned while the CM justified it as one that shows preference for the Shinde-Fadnavis leadership, was followed by another full page ad blitz as damage control.
This one had pictures of everyone possible — Sena founder Bal Thackeray, senior leader Anand Dighe, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union Home Minister Amit Shah, Fadnavis, Shinde as well as the nine Shiv Sena ministers in the state cabinet.
Maharashtra BJP co-chief spokesperson Vishwas Pathak told ThePrint, “Eknath Shinde is the captain of a team with several stalwarts such as Devendra Fadnavis, Sudhir Mungantiwar, Chandrakant Patil, Girish Mahajan and so on. When the team performs well, the captain gets the credit and we are okay with that.”
However, in the BJP’s corridors, party leaders were mostly using the same adjective to describe the entire incident — childish — with some saying that the advertisement was placed by someone very close to Shinde who was later questioned by the BJP leadership in Delhi.
There have been more incidents. In Shinde’s backyard of Thane and his son Shrikant’s constituency of Kalyan, local BJP leaders have sparked verbal wars by laying claim on these seats for their party.
Senior Shiv Sena leader Gajanan Kirtikar had last month, while speaking to reporters, said that the Shinde-led Shiv Sena will contest next year’s Lok Sabha poll from the 22 seats it had in 2019, ruffling some feathers in the BJP. He added that his party is treated “unfairly”. A week later, he retracted his statement saying he was misquoted.
The above-mentioned BJP leader who wished to not be named said that despite knowing that Shinde has not truly been able to split the Shiv Sena’s rank and file, the BJP is still compelled to depend on his Sena for now.
“We are fighting for the Hindutva vote, Shinde’s Shiv Sena is fighting for the Hindutva vote and so is the Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray). Hardcore Shiv Sena loyalists will not be able to digest that a vote for the Thackeray camp will be a vote for Sharad Pawar. On the other hand, a vote for Shinde’s Shiv Sena is a vote for the BJP. That helps us,” he said.
Speaking to ThePrint, requesting anonymity, a senior leader from the Shinde-led faction said both parties in the ruling coalition understand the need for co-dependence. “If you look at the last few elections in Maharashtra, it is clear that no party can form the government singlehandedly here.”
“If we want to establish power in this equation, then two parties need to come together. If you take the Hindutva agenda, BJP-Shiv Sena can get power. The 2019 elections were a testimony to that, and yet the verdict was not honoured. That was remedied after our uprising, not rebellion, last year,” he said.
“The NCP can never come to power on its own, neither can the two Senas, nor can the BJP. But, if Sena-BJP are together on a common nationalistic Hindutva thread, we can establish power. Both sides know it, so these squabbles on the ground can continue, but everyone involved knows that our journey needs to be together,” he added.
Shinde camp’s optical jolts
After forming a government with the BJP with 40 of the undivided Shiv Sena’s MLAs in his pocket, Shinde immediately poached 13 of the Shiv Sena’s MPs.
And the jolts have not stopped. Just the way it swiped the MPs, Shinde’s Shiv Sena has attracted leaders whose defection from the Shiv Sena (UBT) has been optically hurtful for the party. But, these aren’t necessarily names that will help the Shinde-led Shiv Sena with a significant electoral swing.
The Thane strongman caused a vertical split in many of the committed Shiv Sena families, starting with the Thackerays. First, Bal Thackeray’s daughter-in-law and Jaidev Thackeray’s estranged wife Smita Thackeray showed her support to Shinde by visiting him to congratulate him for becoming CM in July last year.
The same week, Uddhav Thackeray’s nephew Nihar Thackeray showed solidarity with the Shinde camp and even went on to represent the party as a lawyer in its battle in the Supreme Court regarding the disqualification petitions against the Shinde-led Shiv Sena’s MLAs.
Then, Bal Thackeray’s longtime personal assistant, Champa Singh Thapa, joined the Shinde faction in September last year.
In March this year, Bhushan Desai, the son of Shiv Sena (UBT) leader and Thackeray’s trusted aide Subhash Desai, joined the Shinde-led Shiv Sena.
And in April, Amey Ghole, a senior Yuva Sena leader, a former Shiv Sena corporator and a close confidante of Aaditya Thackeray, joined the Shinde faction.
In between, senior Sena leaders such as Ramdas Kadam and Anandrao Adsul also pledged their support to Shinde.
Shiv Sena (UBT) MLC Manisha Kayande, who was also a party spokesperson, quit the Thackeray faction Sunday and joined the Shinde-led Shiv Sena.
Commenting on the defections, Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Raut said: “There are some people…such trash keeps flying here and there. When the wind direction changes, it comes back to our doorstep.”
According to political analyst Abhay Deshpande “the dent that Shinde had made in the beginning has not deepened”.
“The cadre is with Thackeray. From the outside, optically it may seem that they have split the party, but that’s not necessarily true from the inside,” he said to ThePrint. “Uddhav Thackeray has been able to control the ground level atmosphere completely. In the perception battle, the government’s work is not in discussion or focus at all. The focus has been on ‘pannas khoke’ (50 boxes) etc.”
The ‘50 khoke’ sneer refers to the Opposition’s campaign on how the 40 Sena MLAs and 10 independents who rebelled with Shinde against the MVA government did so for money.
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Shinde’s Shiv Sena
In the one year since the rebellion, Shinde’s Shiv Sena has had to build the entire party organisation across the state, appointing district chiefs, functionaries in charge of all of the state’s 288 constituencies and opening shakhas, the most basic administrative unit in the Shiv Sena that has traditionally been the centre of the party’s public welfare work. Many from the Shinde camp themselves say that the process has been slower than they expected.
Moreover, a Cabinet expansion has been on the cards for almost ten months now and has been pushed forward multiple times, supposedly due to differences between the Shiv Sena and BJP on power sharing.
MLAs who were expecting an opportunity and were earlier getting restless, have now decided to follow a wait and watch approach.
“It is not that work isn’t happening because the Cabinet has not been expanded. At least we have a CM who meets us now,” Prakash Surve, a Shinde camp MLA from Mumbai, told ThePrint. He cited how a few days ago, Shinde had met him at 2 am because the MLA wanted to get aid from the CM’s relief fund sanctioned for a family from his constituency that had met with an accident and had to pay expensive hospital bills.
“The very next day, the file was in Mantralaya,” he added.
MLAs who rebelled with Shinde last year had alleged that Uddhav was inaccessible for his legislators and used to not help them get their work done.
Party MLAs say the work of building the organisation ground up has happened well in constituencies where the Shinde camp has legislators. “It is a little slow in other places. You may not see the results right away, But it is all coming together slowly,” the Shinde camp MLA first mentioned said.
A second Mumbai-based MLA said that the Opposition’s supposed smear campaign against the Shinde-led Shiv Sena — slamming the party’s government as “khoke sarkar” — has damaged his party to a certain extent.
“You look at how speedily the CM has cleared obstacles in Mumbai’s stalled infrastructure projects, the kind of schemes that he has brought about for women. Shinde works 18 hours a day, he is meeting people, touring the state, making good decisions,” he said.
“It doesn’t take long for bad news to spread, but it takes a very long time for good news to spread,” he added.
Shinde’s son, Shrikant Shinde, who is specially focusing on strengthening the party in Mumbai, considered to be Thackeray’s home turf, told ThePrint earlier this month, “We have been having district and assembly level meetings across the state to strengthen organisational structure. People are going where they know their work will be taken care of. There’s no confusion now in people’s minds.”
And with regards to the party’s equation with the BJP, multiple leaders from the Shinde-led Shiv Sena ThePrint spoke to, chose to dismiss the friction at the ground level. “It is the responsibility of the leadership to ensure that the alliance goes on smoothly. Both are strong and both are committed to the alliance. Instead of focusing on what people on the ground are saying, we should look at the agenda of the leaders,” Dilip Lande, MLA from the Shinde-led Shiv Sena, told ThePrint.
This statement too — like the jibe about the BJP growing in Maharashtra because of the Shiv Sena — is a familiar one. Until last year, this was the defence of the undivided Shiv Sena on spats between its cadres with those of the NCP. The tussle boiled over to a full fledged rebellion under Shinde’s leadership. This time though, the Shinde-led Shiv Sena doesn’t have much of an option. And neither does the BJP.
(Edited by Smriti Sinha)
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