It was the first such trial of strength between the ruling three-party Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). However, much to the chagrin of the BJP, the Uddhav Thackeray-led MVA dispensation has emerged trumps in the first state-level direct elections to the Maharashtra legislative council.
The Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), which are in the MVA with the Shiv Sena, won four of six seats, with the BJP managing to notch up a victory in just one. The MVA’s leaders have used this success to claim that their post-election alliance has the mandate of the people.
While BJP leaders claim they can engineer defections from disgruntled legislators to topple the MVA regime which was sworn in last year, their counterparts on the treasury benches maintain that rebel MLAs will face the combined might of the three parties in the subsequent bypolls.
The defeat that has stung the BJP hard is in its bastion of the Nagpur graduate constituency, which the party’s stalwarts have represented for unbroken terms from 1958 since the days of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh (BJS), its previous avatar. That Nagpur is the home turf of former chief minister Devendra Fadnavis and union minister Nitin Gadkari has added insult to injury.
Bachharaj Vyas, the former president of the BJS, was an MLC from the constituency from 1958 to 1972, after which Gangadharrao Fadnavis (father of Devendra Fadnavis), and later Nitin Gadkari represented it in the upper house of the state legislature. This time, incumbent MLC Anil Sole, who belongs to the camp led by Gadkari, was dropped in favour of Nagpur mayor Sandeep Joshi, who has been Fadnavis’s campaign manager.
As Joshi faced off against Abhijit Wanjari, who belongs to the other backward class (OBC) Teli community, the campaign took on casteist hues, with questions being raised about why the BJP has always chosen a Brahmin to represent the seat. That the Telis, who with the Kunbis and Malis, are influential OBCs in Vidarbha, were upset at the BJP denying an assembly nomination to the-then energy minister Chandrashekhar Bavankule, added fuel to the fire. BJP sources say that perhaps to mitigate this anger, the Gadkari camp had suggested the name of a Teli community candidate.
With Congress ministers Nitin Raut, Sunil Kedar and assembly speaker Nana Patole burying their differences to work for the party candidate and consolidation of Dalit, OBC and non-Brahmin voters, Wanjari sailed through in the prestige battle. BJP leaders admit that even the party’s core voters may have broken ranks in this contest.
Similarly, in the Pune graduate constituency, which has been represented by union minister Prakash Javadekar and incumbent BJP state unit chief Chandrakantdada Patil, the party chose Sangram Deshmukh, a recent inductee. The NCP fielded Arun Lad, who defeated Deshmukh with a convincing margin.
BJP leaders admit that choosing Deshmukh over claims of party loyalists, especially those from the Brahmin community, who form sizeable numbers, especially in Pune district, may have hurt their chances.
The NCP’s Satish Chavan retained his Aurangabad graduate constituency, where sidelined BJP leader Pankaja Munde’s confidante Pravin Ghuge was denied a nomination in favour of Shirish Boralkar, who was said to be chosen by the Fadnavis camp.
Apart from the rebellion of Pankaja loyalist Ramesh Pophale, the BJP also saw the exit of former Beed MP Jaisingrao Gaikwad Patil. A former aide of Pankaja’s father, the BJP stalwart Gopinath Munde and his brother-in-law Pramod Mahajan, Gaikwad Patil, who has his roots in the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and Arya Samaj, had represented the graduate constituency for two terms. Upset at being neglected in the BJP, he joined the NCP during the campaign, which was said to be polarised on caste lines.
Similarly, the MVA’s nominees Jayant Asgaonkar (Congress-Pune teacher constituency) also emerged trumps. However, apart from the sole victory of former Congress minister Amrish Patel, who has switched sides to the BJP, from the Dhule-Nandurbar local bodies constituency, the BJP had another small consolation. The Shiv Sena’s sole candidate and incumbent MLC Shrikant Deshpande was unable to retain his Amravati teacher constituency against an independent, Kiran Sarnaik.
Senior BJP leaders from the anti-Fadnavis camp blame him for dismantling the party’s principle of collective leadership. Party workers did not work whole-heartedly for candidates who had been imported from other parties or were imposed from above, they note. Relentless personal attacks on the members of the Thackeray family in the aftermath of actor Sushant Singh Rajput’s death may have led to the BJP burning its bridges with the Shiv Sena for any future political rapprochement, they fear. Since the NCP is seen as calling the shots in the MVA, with weighty portfolios like home, finance, water resources and housing, it may be loathe to share power with the BJP on unfavourable terms, they admit.
Even the staunchest BJP men admit that this defeat will have ripples extending far beyond these constituencies. Since the graduate and teacher constituencies have an electoral college consisting of educated voters, this may also foretell rising disillusionment in the middle class against the BJP. The BJP may also have to take on the unified strength of the MVA if the constituents enter into a pre-poll alliance in the local body polls.
There is another harsh reality that is staring at the BJP with cold, unblinking eyes. The BJP rode on the back of the Narendra Modi wave to get an unprecedented 122 seats in the 2014 assembly elections and come to power in Maharashtra. This led to several leaders and cadre from other parties like the Congress and NCP migrating to it for power and political patronage. Now that the party is out of the government, will these fair-weather friends stay true to their fickle sense of loyalties or continue with the BJP for those much-promised achhe din after the long haul?
Read all the Latest News, Breaking News and Coronavirus News here
Comments
0 comment