No narrative rests solely on issues. There is always the emotional quotient that gives the campaign the extra edge.
MUMBAI: The state that homes the Maximum City is also seeing the maximum confusion this poll season. At play here is not just a battle between the two alliances—the BJP-led Mahayuti versus the Congress-led Maha Vikas Aghadi. After the splintering of the Shiv Sena and the NCP, the battle is many layered. And what makes it more intriguing is that neither party has offered a chief ministerial candidate.
At least not officially. With the Mahayuti going into the campaign with Eknath Shinde as the sitting Chief Minister it is expected that the current arrangement would continue, should the alliance get the numbers, unless of course the BJP does spectacularly well, at which point it would be difficult to deny Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis the job. However, Eknath Shinde has acquired the image of a deliverer and the election is being fought as much in his name as it is on the Prime Minister’s appeal. There are also those within the BJP’s Central leadership who would rather go with Eknath Shinde than promote Devendra Fadnavis.
The MVA too claims that the winning MLAs will decide which party gets a shot at the CM’s chair. But sources claim that Uddhav Thackeray has already secured an assurance from the Congress leadership to support his candidature. As a former CM, Uddhav Thackeray is currently the tallest leader in the alliance (taking Sharad Pawar’s age and health into consideration). Hence and not without its irony the battle for Maharashtra could well be a Sena vs Sena affair.
As for the poll rhetoric is concerned, both sides are offering the usual bouquet of welfare schemes. Being in government, the Mahayuti has the first mover advantage, as it could not merely announce but also implement its Ladki Behna Scheme in the run-up to the polls, giving out the first tranche on Raksha Bandhan. As a side note, it is interesting that the CM waited for the Lok Sabha polls to be over before announcing this scheme. With 13.5 million women registering for the scheme, as many as four tranches have already been distributed, handing out Rs 1,500 a month to women with a special Diwali bonus of Rs 3,000. The MVA too has come up with its Mahalakshmi scheme for women promising financial aid of Rs 3,000 per month. Each alliance is reaching out to the farmers, senior citizens and the marginalised with various other welfare schemes.
As regards the narrative of jobs and development, charges are being traded. The Mahayuti alliance has accused the MVA of acting as a “speed breaker” to development by opposing the Mumbai metro on environmental grounds, as well as criticising the Mumbai-Ahmedabad bullet train (on the grounds that it diverts jobs to Gujarat) and the redevelopment of the Dharavi slum (since the project has been awarded to Gautam Adani). For its part the MVA claims that the Shinde government has allowed all big ticket projects like the GIFT City and the Vedanta-Foxconn project to go to Gujarat without making a serious pitch for them. Uddhav Thackeray also speaks about the recent shifting of the Tata Airbus plant from Nagpur to Gujarat as an example of how the current government was ignoring the state’s potential.
But no narrative rests solely on issues. There is always the emotional quotient that gives the campaign the extra edge. The battle for Maharashtra is now in its final phase, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi also stepping into the poll arena. He is tipped to hold nine rallies across the state, and in his usual narrative setting style he has coined the slogan that will give the final heft to the Mahayuti campaign: Ek hain toh safe hain. At a rally in Dhule, the PM made a pitch for caste based unity, claiming that “the sole agenda of the Congress was to make one caste fight against other. They don’t want SC, STs and OBCs to progress.” This slogan is a more palatable version of the one coined by Yogi Adityanath’s “Batenge toh Katenge” and aims to counter the MVA’s attempts to divide the Hindu vote on caste lines. Don’t forget that in the recent Lok Sabha polls, the Congress had been successful in peddling the narrative that the BJP wants to amend the Constitution and do away with reservations, so clearly the BJP is keen to nip that line of thought. Hence in his rallies the PM makes it a point to remind the public that it is the Congress, from Nehru to Rajiv Gandhi that had opposed caste-based reservations “while the yuvraj is now promoting caste divisions”.
Rahul Gandhi too has been doing some course correction in his own narrative setting. His recent newspaper editorial talking about a new deal made it clear that contrary to perception he is not against big business or industry, but what he is against is monopoly. Given the fact that Maharashtra houses the financial capital of the country this was an important message for him to convey.
The chemistry between the allies in both the alliances is also crucial and it is in this context that one must mention Ajit Pawar, who is clearly feeling like the underdog in the Mahayuti alliance. There is a turf war between him and Eknath Shinde, which was apparent when both Shinde and Ajit Pawar tried to take credit for the Ladki Bahin Yojana with their respective posters leaving the other one out. More recently Ajit Pawar has publicly distanced himself from Yogi Adityanath’s slogan stating that “outsiders” are trying to create communal tensions. The tension between the Shinde Sena, BJP and Ajit Pawar’s NCP was also apparent when Pawar backed Nawab Malik’s candidature for the Mankhurd Shivaji Nagar seat, while Shinde and the BJP have backed Suresh Krishna Patil as the official Mahayuti candidate.
In contrast, the divisions are not so apparent within the MVA. Privately, local Congress leaders are unhappy with the prominence given to Uddhav Thackeray by their central leadership. But post Haryana the Congress is on the back-foot and seems okay to cede leadership to its ally. As far as Sharad Pawar is concerned, he chose the election campaign to announce his retirement from parliamentary politics. His goal is now to ensure that his daughter’s political future is secured and for that he needs the NCP to deliver a sizeable chunk in these elections.
As you can see, it is not just a clash of alliances but also a battle of legacies as Ajit Pawar and Sharad Pawar fight for the NCP while Eknath Shinde and Uddhav Thackeray clash to prove which one of them controls the real “Shiv Sena”. The Congress needs to balance the Haryana loss, while the BJP needs to overcome its shameful showing in the Lok Sabha when the party won only 9 seats. Clearly, it’s a maha-yudh out there in the state of Maharashtra.