IT WAS AN ambition the BJP had long harboured—the control of Mumbai. On January 16, led by Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, it finally succeeded, loosening the near 30-year grip the Thackeray family had on the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation.
Of the 227 seats in the municipal election, the BJP won 89, and its ally the Shiv Sena (Eknath Shinde) won 29, together crossing the halfway mark of 114. The Shiv Sena (UBT) won 65 seats, showing that it largely retains the support of its core vote bank of Marathis, but its ally, Raj Thackeray’s Maharashtra Navnirman Sena, won just six.
The BMC election was a do-or-die battle for the Thackeray cousins, more so for Uddhav. Their political future depends heavily on the advantages that come with running the richest civic body in India, including money and manpower.
In that sense, the Sena (UBT) seems to have survived in the battle for Mumbai—it has at least retained its core vote bank. Elsewhere in the state, though, the party had a poor outing, especially compared with the Sena (Shinde).
Sena (UBT) spokesperson Harshal Pradhan said that the elections proved that the BJP cannot erase the Thackeray family’s contribution to Mumbai. “Uddhav ji fought against all odds,” he said. “The other side had money power, muscle power, the threat of investigative agencies, while Uddhav and Raj Thackeray had grassroots support of their sainiks.”
At the state level, the results indicate that as Maharashtra becomes more urbanised, it is leaning towards the BJP. Its plank of hindutva plus development has appealed to voters.
It was in 2014 that the BJP started openly voicing its dream of controlling Mumbai. Party leaders spoke of a “triple engine government”, which meant a BJP mayor in Mumbai, a BJP chief minister and a BJP prime minister.
The BJP and the Shiv Sena had contested separately in that year’s assembly elections, but would form a post-poll alliance. The BJP was growing stronger; the BMC, however, stayed with the Sena.
In 2017, the BJP decided to go it alone in the BMC elections. The Sena was upset, but the challenge energised its cadre. It won 84 seats, with the BJP improving its tally from 31 in 2012 to 82.
It was five years later, when the Sena split and the Uddhav-led government was toppled, that the BJP’s ambitions grew rapidly. Together with the Sena (Shinde) and the Ajit Pawar faction of the Nationalist Congress Party, it dominated the state’s political landscape. More than 50 corporators—elected on the united Sena ticket—joined the Shinde faction.
This was a major blow to Uddhav. To counter the outflow, he buried his differences with Raj and, after 20 years, they came together for the BMC elections. Uddhav wanted Raj to be a part of the Maha Vikas Aghadi, but the Congress objected. It feared losing Muslim and north Indian support. As a result, Uddhav did not contest as part of the MVA and allied with the MNS for the BMC election.
The cousins made a splash, too. They opposed the state government’s decision to enforce the teaching of Hindi from class one, and the support they drew from the public forced the government to repeal the decision.
Leaders of the two parties then began meeting quietly to work out how the cousins could collaborate. All these moves culminated in the announcement of their alliance on December 24. “We have come together to remain together in the future also,” said Uddhav.
They accused the BJP of being anti-Marathi and anti-Maharashtra. Industrialist Gautam Adani was also targeted, as they saw him as the biggest beneficiary of the BJP’s rule. This strategy worked well in Dharavi, which the Adani group is redeveloping. Had the MVA fought together, the battle might have been much harder for the BJP.
Said senior political analyst Abhay Deshpande: “Where it (the BJP) lost out was in the core Marathi belt which has voted for Shiv Sena (UBT) in large numbers.”
He added that this election had made one thing clear—the Thackerays cannot win the BMC with the Marathi vote bank alone, while the BJP cannot bank only on its non-Marathi base of Gujaratis, Marwaris and north Indians. While the Thackerays need to be more inclusive in their appeal to voters, he said, the BJP has to reach out to core Marathi voters in areas like Dadar, Parel, Shivdi, Worli and Lalbaug.
Apart from Mumbai, the BJP has made massive gains elsewhere, winning 1,425 seats in municipal corporations across Maharashtra. The Sena (Shinde) won 399 seats and retained its bastion of Thane municipal corporation. The Mahayuti alliance will now control 24 of 29 corporations.
In south Maharashtra, traditionally a stronghold of the Congress and the NCP, the Mahayuti dethroned the Congress in Kolhapur. The BJP won the Ichalkaranji municipal corporation and was just shy of majority in the Sangli municipal corporation.
In Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad, where both NCP factions had come together, the BJP still won.
But the BJP wasn’t the only one to win big. The All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) won 126 seats across the state. The party secured 33 of 37 seats it contested in Sambhaji Nagar (formerly Aurangabad), and did well in Malegaon, Nanded Waghala, Solapur, Dhule, Bhiwandi, Mumbai and Thane municipal corporations. It is a clear signal that the Muslim vote is moving to the AIMIM from traditional secular parties such as the Congress and the NCP. The most striking example of this was in Mumbra—the bastion of NCP (SP) MLA Jitendra Awhad—where the AIMIM’s Sahar Shaikh won.
The Congress also has to worry about why, despite allying with Prakash Ambedkar’s Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi, it had a poor showing in Mumbai.
All eyes are now on who will be Mumbai mayor. Will the BJP get the post or can the Thackeray cousins engineer cross-voting to defeat the BJP candidate? The corporators are expected to vote in the mayoral election later this month.
Interestingly, Shinde lodged his 29 corporators at the five-star Taj Lands End for four days starting January 17. The reason given was that most of them were first-time corporators and hence needed training on how to go about their work.
Shiv Sena (UBT) MP Sanjay Raut claimed that even Shinde’s corporators, being true Shiv Sainiks, wanted to elect a non-BJP mayor. As Uddhav had said after the results: “We may have lost, but our defeat also has an aura to it. God willing, we will have our mayor in Mumbai.”
The BJP, however, is firm that the mayor will be from its camp. The Shinde Sena reportedly asked for the mayor’s post for two-and-a-half years; the BJP countered with the same demand, but in Shinde’s stronghold of Thane.
A decision will be reached only after Fadnavis returns from Davos. And when he does, he is unlikely to cede any ground to the Shinde faction.