With just days to go for the crucial assembly elections in Maharashtra, India, all eyes are on Uddhav Thackeray and his faction of the Shiv Sena, which is fighting a battle for survival and relevance after a split in the party in June 2022.
The Sena’s dominance has largely been in Mumbai and more than half of the 15 MLAs or legislators in the Uddhav camp belong to the bustling city.
When the BJP engineered the Shiv Sena split -n which lead to rebel Sena leader Eknath Shinde becoming Chief Minister with the BJP’s support - there was a wave of sympathy for Uddhav Thackeray, the soft-spoken son of his firebrand father and Sena founder Bal Thackeray.
It the fight for Bala saheb’s legacy that is at the heart of the Sena vs Sena battle.
In the general elections earlier this year, of the 21 seats the Uddhav Sena contested across the state, it won 9, a strike rate similar to its performance in 2019 polls. Its vote share also remained intact. But the state polls are proving to be a tougher draw.
For one, Eknath Shinde has turned out to be a better administrator than most people had expected. In the last couple of years, Shinde has managed to come into his own despite having to depend on the BJP for support and have the BJP’s Devendra Fadnavis as his deputy.
Game changer in Maharashtra
It is no secret that the BJP desperately wants better numbers on its own in the upcoming polls so that Fadnavis is back in the Chief Minister’s chair. That is why there is no official CM candidate from the BJP-Eknath Shinde camp. But Shinde is targeting more than 40 seats, so that his chances of returning as Chief Minister become much stronger.
Where Shinde has scored is in developing urban infrastructure in the city. New metro lines, flyovers and roads have come up in Mumbai. Welfare schemes for women are another crucial factor in this election. The Shinde faction and the BJP are banking on the huge success of a monthly stipend scheme for poor women.
This could be the game changer in Maharashtra much like a similar scheme helped the BJP in Madhya Pradesh. Eknath Shinde’s rise in Maharashtra politics is remarkable, from driving an auto rickshaw to occupying the Chief Minister’s chair. He surprised even the BJP with his faction’s solid showing in the Lok Sabha polls winning 7 of the 15 seats it contested.
Now, the two Shiv Senas are in a head to head battle in 49 seats across Maharashtra, and most of these seats are in Mumbai city and the Mumbai Metropolitan Region, all strongholds of the undivided Sena. Many political watchers were surprised when Uddhav fell out with the BJP back in 2019 and went on to join the Congress and NCP (Sharad Pawar) in an alliance.
The split with the BJP was over rotational Chief Ministership. Uddhav faced a lot of criticism for the “unnatural” alliance with the Congress but fended it off. However, even though Uddhav went on to become Chief Minister with the support of the Congress and NCP, he paid a very heavy price, with the split in the Sena and loss of several party MLAs and leaders.
The alliance also appears to have benefited the Pawar faction of the NCP and the Congress more than the Sena UBT. Uddhav is not in a position to call the shots any longer as he once did. The Maharashtra polls don’t have national leaders like Modi or Rahul Gandhi at the forefront of the campaign.
It is very much an election about local leaders and their futures like Uddhav Thackeray, Eknath Shinde, Sharad Pawar and Devendra Fadnavis.
