Mumbai: After a bitter battle and infighting ahead of municipal council polls in Maharashtra 2 December, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena have signalled a truce and decided to start work as an alliance for the next round of local elections, especially for Mumbai and Thane.
Elections to 29 municipal corporations, including in cities such as Mumbai and Thane, are scheduled to be held early next year. Polls to Zilla Parishads across the state are also likely to be held next year. This week, leaders of the BJP and the Shiv Sena held a series of meetings on the sidelines of the winter session of the legislature in Nagpur to send a signal that the Mahayuti intends to contest these elections together.
Speaking to reporters in Nagpur, Deputy Chief Minister Shinde said, “Three days ago, CM Devendraji, Ravindra Chavan, Chandrashekhar Bawankule… we all met. We decided that the upcoming municipal corporation elections should be fought as Mahayuti. We have started talks accordingly.”
Following Monday’s meeting, Shinde and Maharashtra BJP President Ravindra Chavan had another meeting that ran for two hours at the former’s residence to hammer out the initial details of poll preparation.
The Mahayuti comprises the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the Shinde-led Shiv Sena and the Ajit Pawar-led Nationalist Congress Party (NCP). The meetings this week, however, were mostly between leaders of the BJP and the Shinde-led Shiv Sena.
Speaking to reporters in Nagpur Friday morning after a late night meeting with Deputy Chief Minister Shinde, BJP Maharashtra President Ravindra Chavan said, “We say Mahayuti because it has all constituent parties, there is the Republican Party of India, Ajit Pawar’s NCP and other parties. We will consult with all these parties at the local level in different local bodies.”
Twenty four more municipal councils and nagar panchayats will go to polls 20 December. Additionally, 154 wards from across 76 municipal councils will also go to polls that day. Results for all 246 municipal councils and 42 nagar panchayats that have voted in these two phases will be declared Sunday.
Committees for every local body
Speaking to reporters Friday morning in Nagpur, Chavan said the meetings were to affirm that the Mahayuti plans to contest the next set of local polls, those to municipal corporations, together and that the parties need to set some systems in place for its leaders to take the campaign forward accordingly.
“In any condition, there should definitely be an alliance for Mumbai and the other main municipal corporations. All seniors resolutely said this. For the other corporations, it was decided to form a committee for the corporations to discuss what the formula for the alliance should be,” Chavan said.
The BJP chief added that every such committee will have 4-6 key leaders of that area who will then survey the wards, winnability and consult other Mahayuti allies.
“While the committees will start the initial discussions in a day or two, the final decision about any seat sharing in different local bodies will be taken by the senior leadership,” Chavan said, adding that all three main Mahayuti leaders—CM Fadnavis and Deputy CMs Shinde and Ajit Pawar—are on the same page and capable of taking a decision together.
He, however, emphasised that in key corporations such as Mumbai and Thane, there will “100 percent be an alliance”.
Rift within Mahayuti ahead of council polls
There were telltale signs of friction within the Mahayuti in the run-up to the council polls. The Shinde-led Shiv Sena accused the BJP of poaching its party leaders, former councillors and corporators, and even inducting rivals of Shiv Sena leaders.
At one point, all ministers of the Shiv Sena, except Shinde, even boycotted a state cabinet meeting and later met CM Fadnavis in his chamber to express displeasure over the poaching of their leaders. Fadnavis had reportedly highlighted how the Shiv Sena too had been breaking the alliance dharma with its inductions and comments by party leaders, and both sides needed to stop.
Shinde had also escalated the matter to Union minister Amit Shah.
There were many places in districts such as Sindhudurg, Dharashiv, Satara, Palghar and so on where BJP candidates were directly pitted against candidates from the Shinde-led Shiv Sena. On the other hand, in Kolhapur the two rival NCPs, one led by Ajit Pawar which is part of the Mahayuti, and the other led by Sharad Pawar which is part of the Maha Vikas Aghadi, joined forces.
There was angst in particular over Chavan, who had been flexing BJP muscle in Shinde’s backyard—his home turf of Thane and his MP son Shrikant Shinde’s constituency of Kalyan Dombivli. Chavan hails from the Konkan region, but has been representing Dombivali as a BJP MLA in 2009. Many within the BJP say, one of the reasons behind making him state president was also to expand the party in Shinde’s bastion and cut the leader’s clout a bit.
However, extending an olive branch to each other post the first phase of council elections 2 December, Shinde and Chavan shared a stage Saturday last week in Kalyan at the bhoomipujan of a clutch of projects in the town.
(Edited by Viny Mishra)
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