What the breakup means for BJP, Sena

Vibha Sharma in New Delhi

A lot has been written about the day NCP supremo Sharad Pawar came calling on Prime Minister Narendra Modi  while the epic “maha drama” raged back home in Maharashtra.

One claim is that the Maratha strongman wanted to tell the BJP’s topmost leader in person that he was aware of the attempts to tap the weak link in the NCP and his family, nephew Ajit Pawar, and that an end be put to it. After all, Sharad Pawar did provide the BJP moral support when the Shiv Sena played hardball after it fell short in the 2014 Assembly polls.

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However, while “strange bedfellows” NCP, Congress and Shiv Sena struggled to reach the common meeting ground, the BJP carried on with the “plan” and the rest, as they say, is history.

In those terms, Pawar has a lot to thank BJP’s “Chanakya” Amit Shah for. His career and stature has revived, and how. Despite being pushed against the wall, Pawar not only helped sulking NDA ally Uddhav Thackeray realise his dream by giving Maharashtra its first Shiv Sena Chief Minister, but also re-established his credentials countrywide. The Pawar factor is something the BJP had neither anticipated, nor bargained for.

BJP, post Maharashtra

A section in the BJP now claims that Amit Shah is “not too fond” of Devendra Fadnavis. He is being touted as “solely responsible for the wrong distribution of tickets and decisions that led to a major state slipping out of the saffron hold”.

His “closeness” to PM Modi and Nagpur (RSS headquarters) are his saving grace, they say, adding that “Fadnavis gave precedence to outsiders and this is not how the expansion of the BJP should have happened” in Maharashtra.

But a counter argument is that the “unnecessary needling of Pawar”, who was perhaps playing his last political innings, via ED probes played a big role in him taking the lead to stitch the unlikely alliance. “Had it not been for the NCP and Congress turncoats, the BJP would have won much less,” Fadnavis supporters say.

The bottomline, however, is that the BJP with 105 seats rejected the power-sharing offer of the Sena with 56 seats, forcing it to turn to arch rivals NCP (54) and Congress (44). What happens six months later no one knows, but today the BJP is cutting a lonely figure in the state that sends 48 MPs to the Lok Sabha, second only to Uttar Pradesh’s 80.

Maharashtra is a story of a party in a commanding position undermining rivals, banking on the “tainted” and paying the price. In those terms, it has a lot to worry for, maybe not immediately at the national level, but definitely in states, where the Maharashtra example has given hope and a template to rivals looking for means to stall the BJP juggernaut.

The formula was unsuccessfully tried by the Samajwadi Party and the BSP in Uttar Pradesh and the Congress and the JD(S) in Karnataka. The question is: will it work in Jharkhand, where a united Opposition is fighting the BJP minus allies AJSU, LJP and JD(U)?

National versus state politics

Those who believe the BJP’s survival is in danger post-Maharashtra can think again. Backed by the might of the RSS and its own well-oiled election machinery, the BJP enjoys a pan-India acceptance that no other party can currently claim. Barring the South, that too only in Tamil Nadu and Kerala, the BJP’s presence is well registered across the country. 

Rather, the buzz is that PM Modi believes it is time the party walks “without crutches”. The Sena experience may have only consolidated the belief, which is why the upcoming Jharkhand elections will be an important test. “We can get help if required later,” says a leader in response to why the BJP is flying solo and so are its NDA allies. Then there is the section that believes Maharashtra and Haryana should be seen as a wake-up call.

The BJP may be holding on to Karnataka, but Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh results last year have shown that people are ready for options, provided there are any. And the biggest proof is Haryana, where the Congress could have done better had it got its act together in time.

Also, the BJP lost Maharashtra due to the “smart regional pride” pitch by the NCP and the Shiv Sena — “Gujaratis (Modi and Shah) trying to control things in Maharashtra”. Can the move be tried elsewhere, perhaps Bihar? The BJP needs to be on guard now.

Sena and national ambitions

Having had its way in Maharashtra, the Shiv Sena leadership believes it is time they stepped out, which may be easier said than done. The Sena may have got their Chief Minister installed in the Mantralaya, but observers say if Maharashtra were to go to elections today, the biggest beneficiaries perhaps would be the NCP and the Congress.

The BJP and the Sena share a common thread, the “Hindutva vote bank”. The section which voted for the Sena because it was with the BJP is unlikely to do so now. On the contrary, the BJP might get some extra sympathy votes.

The fact is because its vote share was decreasing due to the increasing spread of the BJP, the Sena was demanding an equal share in the power pie. Now that they have decided to break the Hindutva alliance, can their cadres gel with the new partners? That seems unlikely. The NCP and the Congress may have just increased their acceptability range with a little sprinkling of saffron in Maharashtra, but will they like to be seen standing with the Sena in UP and Bihar where other factors work? Again, unlikely.

The Sena’s USP, or say range, is Maharashtra-centric, limited to “Marathi manoos and Hindutva”. Its politics has all through centred around this “anti-outsider” crusade against migrants, first from South and then North, mostly Bihar and UP.

Can the tiger change its stripes?

It all depends on whether the Sena can re-invent itself. Allying with a vehemently anti-BJP Congress may have diluted some of its original vote bank. Even diehard BJP detractors will concede that the vote was not for a Sena-Congress possibility. Then, with great power comes great responsibility.

Now the onus of running the Maharashtra Government is on Uddhav Thackeray and it is unlikely he will adopt an offensive position against either PM Modi or the BJP, signs of which are already visible. A day after he took over, the Sena said Modi and Thackeray shared “brotherly ties” and now it is the responsibility of the former to cooperate with his “younger brother”.

Politics is the art of the possible. Perhaps the biggest mistake the BJP made was to undermine Pawar. Only now it will also have to live with allegations of “misusing” constitutional positions and banking on the “tainted” to “grab power”.

While it plays a waiting game, the BJP is hoping for a Karnataka-like situation to develop. It believes the Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi “will not survive for long”, but it may have much to worry if it actually does. Whether the Sena will use the Aghadi to boost prospects in other parts of the country remains to be seen, but not paying attention to ground realities can certainly spell trouble for the BJP in poll-bound Jharkhand, Karnataka and Delhi and Bihar, next year.