Sharad Pawar
By Anil Singh*
Mumbai: In February this year when the Election Commission handed the clock symbol to the Ajit Pawar faction of the Nationalist Congress Party, Global Bihari had predicted that his uncle Sharad Pawar was capable of resetting the political clock of Maharashtra.
Not only did the wily Maratha — who lost 57 of the 81 MPs, MLAs, and MLCs of the NCP to his nephew — won eight of the 10 Lok Sabha seats his party contested, the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) that he helmed secured 29 of the total 48 seats.
The National Democratic Alliance (NDA) which won 41 seats in 2019 was reduced to 17 seats, a big setback since Maharashtra accounts for most seats after Uttar Pradesh. Time is ticking for Ajit Pawar whose party won just one of the four seats it contested in Maharashtra. His wife Sunetra lost to his niece Supriya Sule in Baramati by 1.58 lakh votes.
Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, who boasted about breaking two parties, has offered to resign.
Fadnavis’ masterstroke hit him like a thunderstroke. Public sympathy was with the NCP and the Shiv Sena which had been split overnight and had their symbols snatched away from them. The electorate seems to have bought Supriya Sule’s statement that the Election Commission judgment divesting them of their party symbol was a “conspiracy against Maharashtra and Marathi people”.
The Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray), which had its bow-and-arrow symbol taken away, contested 23 seats, winning nine, two more than the breakaway Eknath Shinde faction. In 2019, when it fought the Lok Sabha polls in alliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party, the undivided Shiv Sena had won 18 seats.
Also, the big brother attitude of the BJP did not go well with the voters, particularly in Mumbai where the Mahayuti won just two of the six seats, one with a margin of just 48 votes.
Such was the arrogance of the BJP that its projection was 45/48 seats even when political pundits predicted that Maharashtra would not be a cakewalk for it. Exit polls got it wrong here too; they had predicted 22 to 35 seats for the BJP-led Mahayuti and 15 to 26 seats for the MVA.
What the BJP and its cohorts failed to gauge was the disgust with its politics of `jod-tod’. With the crores, it offered MLAs to defect. With its washing machine strategy; who can forget Fadnavis threatening Ajit Pawar with “chakki peesing and peesing” in 2019?
With the politics of hate; Maharashtrians haven’t forgotten the murders of rationalist Dr Narendra Dabholkar and comrade Govind Pansare. With the persecution of critics; the Bhima-Koregaon case in which dozens of dissenters are still rotting in jail has a ‘Made-in-Maharashtra’ stamp. With the PM’s divisive remarks; Muslims who account for 11.5 % of the electorate in the state voted strategically, so much so that Deepak Kesarkar of the Shinde faction said ‘fatwas’ helped Uddhav win in Mumbai.
The PM’s distasteful remark about Uddhav being the “nakli santaan” of Bal Thackeray was the last nail in the coffin. Such low blows gave a heroic halo to Uddhav who otherwise, many say, has the charisma of a bank clerk. In the popular imagination, it was a replay of the Shivaji-Auranzeb face-off. Despite the hundreds of crores spent by the BJP on the Modi referendum, things did not work out this time. There’s a limit to money and muscle power, especially when regional pride is stoked, as Maharashtra proved.
The agrarian distress and the Maratha quota issue too were mismanaged by the BJP. The ban on exporting onions from Maharashtra while allowing the export of white onions from Gujarat was one such illogical step.
The Eknath Shinde-Devendra Fadnavis government promised reservation for the Marathas but they saw through the government’s sleight of hand. The Maratha factor cost the Mahayuti seven to eight seats in Marathwada.
Maharashtrians are also concerned about big projects being lured away to Gujarat. In its first four months, the Eknath Shinde-led government lost four major projects to Gujarat. Among them are the Tata Airbus manufacturing plant and the Vedanta-Foxconn plant.
Mention must also be made of Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Yatra which covered nearly 400 km in Maharashtra and drew large crowds. The so-called ‘Godi‘ media played it down but the Yatra helped boost the Congress Party’s tally from one in 2019 to 12 in 2024.
The unsung heroes are the leftists and socialists who back secular parties in the state. At the recent centenary celebrations for Madhu Dandvate, one found many socialist activists were working on the ground against the Modi government. The YB Chavan centre was packed to capacity, everyone sitting through the five-hour programme.
Dalits by and large voted for the MVA but if the Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi of Prakash Ambedkar had allied with the MVA, it would not have lost at least a couple of seats, notably Akola and Mumbai North-West.
Last but not least, one must not forget that on his own turf, Sharad Pawar is a match for Modi. The Maratha strongman showed once again that he is a master of playing the waiting game. Now with the Modi wave on the wane, an exciting battle is on the cards in October 2024 for the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly elections.
*The writer is an independent journalist based in Mumbai. His recently-published book, `The Fault With Reality: New Experiments with Truth’ (Notion Press speaks) for the silenced majority.
