A handful of Gujarati community leaders joined the Shiv Sena this week. In a feeble attempt to chide the Bharatiya Janata Party about its traditional voter base, the Gujarati community of Mumbai, Uddhav Thackeray said he will “not make them stand in a queue”, and won’t have a “ use and throw” attitude towards them. For Shiv Sena itself, it is a big outreach programme amid the Gujarati community, which is not traditionally considered to be its voter base. On the background of the fast-approaching MCGM (Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai) elections, it is considered as a symbolic move. But this is unlikely to have any substantial impact on increasing the Sena’s Gujarati voter base, say political pundits.
“All those who have entered the Sena from BJP and NCP are not well-known faces. Apart from NCP’s Hemraj Shah, nobody else is a well-known personality. Even Shah doesn’t command a mass following. None of these leaders are capable of swinging votes by themselves. This is Sena’s attempt to lay its foundation in the Gujarati community. Because of the coming polls, they will do anything to increase their voter base,” said Prakash Akolkar, senior political journalist and analyst.
Those who joined the Sena said they did it in the hope of better representation for the Gujarati community.
“The Gujarati section was closed two years ago in the NCP. Though I was the party spokesperson and the general secretary there, I did not have the right to give tickets to anyone. Though I myself don’t want to fight elections, I should be able to give tickets to my community members. Here, we expect at least five to 10 tickets for our community,” Hemraj Shah said.
While Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray didn’t leave the opportunity to target BJP over the way it allegedly misused the community, a Sena spokesperson told The Sunday Guardian, “A group of Gujarati speaking Mumbaikars entered the Shiv Sena and have shown faith in the leadership of Uddhavji. The interesting part is that the age group is varied. Some are as young as 30 and some as old has 75 years. Believers of Jainism, Vaishnav, Swaminarayan, Jalaram Bapa and Shivpanthi are a part of it. Followers of Congress, NCP, BJP and BSP have joined. They are all from different castes and places of origin—from Kutch to Saurashtra to Ahmedabad to Valsad. Profession-wise, too, they are a diverse bunch—from stock market brokers to jewellers to Kumbhar to stationery manufacturers to TV serial producers to garment manufacturers. Such diverse groups of people were a part of the first wave to Shiv Sena.”
Those who entered the Sena are Hemraj Shah, Jayanti Modi, Rajesh Doshi, Kumar Jain, Kamlesh Chitroda, Jignesh Bhuta, Dhaval Shah and Tejas Gohil.
Asked why they chose to join the Sena, Shah said, “See, the Gujarati community is spread in different pockets of the city. They all need representation. It is unique in the Sena that Sainiks stand for you when you fight elections. So, we hope that apart from garnering the Gujarati vote bank in a particular area, we will be able to get votes of the Marathi community as well.”
Till now, the Shiv Sena and the BJP ruled in alliance in the MCGM. The Gujarati business community is traditionally considered as the BJP’s voter base. “This jump indicates that the Sena might want to contest the corporation elections on their own strength,” a Gujarati community leader said. “The business community is very unhappy with the BJP. This demonetisation and other things have caused damage to us. The BJP will have to pay a price in the coming elections,” Shah said. But Akolkar said that prominent Gujarati community leaders were still with the BJP. “Be it Atul Shah or Raj Purohit, they stand strongly with the party. The Sena’s move is not likely to cause any damage to BJP by itself,” he said.