Maharashtra politics has always been full of complexities and it is no different this time. Although the Maha Yuti coalition is pitted against the Maha Vikas Aghadi in the pre-poll scenario, there is every likelihood that the next government could be formed with post poll alliances.
Chief Minister Eknath Shinde knows that he is not going to be the next CM and therefore he has started improving his relations with Sharad Pawar and his faction of the Nationalist Congress Party. The BJP offices all over the state have pictures of Devendra Fadnavis, projecting him as the next Chief Minister. The BJP is contesting at least 150 seats in the 288-member Assembly and there are 18 others from the saffron brigade who are now in the fray as either Shiv Sena (Shinde) or Ajit Pawar’s candidates.
Sharad Pawar, as usual, is playing a deceptive game and is applying pressure on the MVA partners not to declare anyone as the Chief Ministerial candidate. His opponents are accusing him of protecting the interests of big business houses and do not put it beyond him to break the MVA and join hands with any other post poll combination.
In this confusing game, the only two parties which cannot side with each other are the BJP and the Congress. All others are capable of exploring options if the mandate is unclear and leaves scope for re-alignment of forces.
The BJP is also aware that both the Shinde faction of the Shiv Sena and NCP (Ajit Pawar) would not bring much to the table and therefore is first trying to ensure that it has sufficient numbers of its own.
The Congress is in a dilemma on whether it should take a step forward and declare the CM face of the MVA. The reality is that it would be in the grand old party’s interests if Rahul Gandhi during an election meeting was to announce that Uddhav Thackeray would be the CM in case the MVA wins.
There are a large number of people who believe that injustice was done to Uddhav and there is a huge sympathy for him as well. In addition, his faction of Shiv Sena has a very strong cadre support and can pull off many surprises when the results are announced. Therefore, if the Congress were to project him as the CM face even now, he would have no option but to stick to the MVA in any kind of ambiguous post-poll scenario.
The big business is out to put its weight against anyone who can vanquish the Shiv Sena (Uddhav). It is not without a reason that Milind Deora, despite being a Rajya Sabha MP, has decided to contest against Aaditya Thackeray from Worli in Mumbai. Incidentally, Milind had lost very badly in both the 2014 and 2019 Lok Sabha elections as the Congress candidate.
The Pawar family, which has influence in two districts, is trying to project a large role in this closely contested polls. There are still apprehensions that exist regarding the split in the NCP and many political pundits are of the opinion that all this was done with the tacit approval of Sharad Pawar. However, this is not easy to establish.
Sharad Pawar has had a very long political innings which could have been curtailed, had the Congress not aligned with the NCP for the Assembly polls after he was expelled from the party in 1999. This gave him a political lifeline and he gradually consolidated his position with the help of senior Congress leaders.
There are many within the Congress who while analyzing Sonia Gandhi’s long tenure as the party president feel that there were two huge mistakes or blunders she committed during that period. The first was to have an alliance with the NCP which would have been decimated with the Congress emerging much stronger, had this coalition not been announced. The second was when the Congress decided to back Arvind Kejriwal as the Chief Minister following the 2013 outcome which saw its sitting Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit losing with a margin of 26,500 votes and in the process forfeiting her deposit. The Congress could never recover from this decision and in the past ten years has not had even a single member in the Delhi Legislative Assembly and in Parliament.
In Maharashtra, Pawar, an astute politician used his foothold to overshadow the Congress. Even while playing second fiddle, his party controlled all the key ministries in the government and called the shots. In many areas, the Congress leaders, helped him by giving the winning seats to his nominees thus leading to its own gradual diminishment.
In Maharashtra, in the ongoing polls, the Congress needs to learn a lesson from Haryana, where overconfidence cost it the election, notwithstanding allegations of EVM tampering by the BJP. Here, the senior leaders must ensure that no such thing happens and the polls are contested keeping in mind the reality on the ground.
The Congress may have many gifted and influential leaders in its ranks but from its perspective, if it has to keep the BJP out of power, the only way is to back Uddhav Thackeray for the top post in the immediate future. The party should not allow Pawar to hijack the politics subsequently.
Otherwise, Uddhav may have other options open as well. The Congress does not have any such luxury and its future in Maharashtra for the time being is only to keep him as a reliable and effective partner. Between us.