Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Nov 23: It could well be the end of the road for both Uddhav Thackeray and Sharad Pawar whose factions of Shiv Sena and the Nationalist Congress Party respectively were severely mauled by the rival factions in the Maharashtra State Assembly elections on Saturday.
The defeat of the Maha Vikas Aghadi coalition of the Congress, Shiv Sena (UBT) and NCP (Sharad Pawar) may lie the heaviest on the shoulders of former Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray, who in a span of three years, not only lost power in the state and his party, but apparently, also the legacy of his father Balasaheb Thackeray.
The rebel faction of Eknath Shinde, which was accused of “usurping” the party from the legal heir and in turn accused Mr Thackeray of trading in his father’s principles for power and pitched the electoral battle as a test of “Who is the real Shiv Sena”, has lost no time to announce it as an ideological victory.
Chief Minister Eknath Shinde’s son Shrikant Shinde was among the first to declare it so, with a swipe at Uddhav Thackeray. “Shiv Sena is not a private limited company… people have shown who is taking Balasaheb’s ideals forward,” said Shrikant Shinde, whose father had cited Mr Thackeray’s alliance with the Congress and Sharad Pawar — traditional rivals of the Sena — to explain his rebellion in 2022.
His comments, though, struck an incongruous note, coming amid the declarations of the BJP – which, with an eye on the top post, attributed the victory to the ruling alliance’s work on development and welfare and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s leadership.
Mr Modi, however, had endorsed Eknath Shinde’s stance that Mr Thackeray had turned away from the ideology laid down by his father for power. In the run-up to the election, he had called Mr Thackeray “Nakli Santaan (fake child)” of the Sena founder.
The Sena UBT chief had objected vehemently and was quick to declare that after such an insult, he would never be part of any alliance that includes the BJP. Amid BJP mockery that Rahul Gandhi had never accepted Bal Thackeray, he also retorted that the Congress leader had never “questioned his antecedents.”
All this could now come back to haunt the Sena UBT chief as BJP supporters go on a rampage on social media. Mr Thackeray’s closest aide, Sanjay Raut, has been trolled since morning as the scale of the Mahayuti victory became clear and Election Commission showed Mr Shinde’s Sena faction leading on 57 seats, compared to the 18 of the Uddhav Thackeray faction.
Alleging that money was used in the polls, Mr Raut, earlier in the day had questioned how can “all MLAs of Chief Minister Eknath Shinde win.” How can Ajit Pawar, whose betrayal angered Maharashtra, win? I see a big conspiracy in this…This is not a mandate of Marathi ‘manoos’ and farmers… “We do not accept this as people’s mandate. Something is fishy in the election results,” he had added – comments for which he was savaged on social media.
The massive reverses for the Maha Vikas Aghadi come barely six months after the alliance’s sparkling performance in the Lok Sabha election, which many said, had made clear the voters’ disapproval of the political tumult of the last two years — split in Shiv Sena followed by the Uddhav Thackeray government, and the subsequent split in the Nationalist Congress Party of Sharad Pawar.
But in the intervening months, the ruling alliance had spruced up its show to wrest a spectacular victory — one that ensures that the MVA would manage to have very few seats even in the Rajya Sabha, practically dispatching them to political wilderness.
In the run-up to the election, Uddhav Thackeray, who had always maintained a soft-spoken, affable profile, had struck an aggressive note, and challenged the BJP’s Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis. “Either You survive or I,” the 64-year-old had thundered at an internal meeting of the party. His words may well prove prophetic, with Mr Fadnavis now being the front-runner for the state’s top post. If he goes by his words, it is Mr Fadnavis who survives.
For Mr Sharad Pawar, one of Indian politics’ most resilient figures, had hinted that he will quit active politics after his Rajya Sabha term ends in 2026. If the 83-year-old goes ahead with the plan, his retirement will come after his last Maharashtra Assembly elections at the helm of his party proving to be one of the biggest blots in an otherwise stellar career.
He has perhaps suffered his life’s biggest electoral jolt winning only 10 seats after contesting 87 – a strike rate of 11.49%, as against 41 won by the faction led by his nephew Ajit Pawar in the Assembly elections that was considered as the existential battle for both parties. What will add to this ignominy is that the party had a strike rate of 80% in the Lok Sabha polls just six months ago.
In the 2019 Maharashtra Assembly polls, the undivided NCP had won 54 seats, more than its ally Congress, which managed to clinch 44, but even that has changed in these elections. This year, Sharad Pawar’s NCP has won the lowest number of Assembly seats among major political parties in the state, behind the Congress and even Uddhav Thackeray’s Shiv Sena.
Sharad Pawar has been in politics for nearly six decades, and has served as the Chief Minister of Maharashtra four times, even becoming the youngest person to hold the post at the age of 38 in 1978. He has also held various portfolios in the Union cabinet, including defence and agriculture, and was seen to have lost out to PV Narasimha Rao for the Prime Ministership in 1991.
After being expelled from the Congress in 1999 for contesting the right of Sonia Gandhi, who was born in Italy, to lead the party, Mr Pawar formed the NCP and went on to establish it as one of the four key players in Maharashtra – along with the Congress, the BJP and the Shiv Sena. He also joined the Congress-led UPA government at the Centre and served as the agriculture minister for 10 years.
Known for having relationships across party lines, Mr Pawar was also the architect of the Maha Vikas Aghadi in 2019, forging an unlikely alliance of the Congress and the NCP with the Shiv Sena, which was one of the founding members of the BJP-led NDA. Most experts said the Maha Vikas Aghadi would not last, but the alliance survived even the fall of its government in Maharashtra and the successive splits of the Shiv Sena and the NCP.
Earlier this month, Mr Pawar had told people in his stronghold of Baramati, from where he has been an MLA and MP 14 times, that he was considering hanging up his boots. It may come true for the crushing blow the voters in his constituency Baramati has dealt him.