Significance of Maharashtra Local Body Election results
- In Politics
- 08:37 PM, Feb 23, 2017
- Sagar Kinhekar
There is this story of a lion who gets separated from his mother as a child and gets reared by a herd of sheep. He learns to bleat and eat grass like a sheep. He one days gets spotted by another lion who makes him realize its potential and makes him real lion who can roar. The Maharashtra BJP’s story matches with that lion who was so far bleating without knowing his identity but now after getting to know his real self is roaring and how!
In 2014 when BJP won 23 seats to emerge as the single largest party in Maharashtra outdoing Shivsena, its traditional senior partner in Maharashtra, everyone thought it was a freak incident riding on popular Modi wave. Then came assembly polls where Sena and BJP could not finalize the understanding for seat sharing and contested the elections separately. BJP contested most of the assembly seats. The obvious guess was that this will split the traditional saffron constituency and benefit Congress and NCP. However, BJP surprised everyone to emerge as single largest party with 122 seats in a 288-member assembly. Still short of simple majority, BJP formed a government with Sena in a post poll alliance. This made Sena believe that they could arm-twist BJP and drive the government the way they did in earlier Sena- BJP government of 90s. But this BJP had started roaring after identifying its own potential. They showed this by rejecting an alliance with Shiv Sena in Maharashtra local body election for which counting happened today.
This local body election was keenly watched, especially the bigger municipalities like Mumbai, Pune and Nagpur. BJP once more surprised everyone with almost a clean sweep. BJP has won majority seats except in Thane and Mumbai. Thane, a traditional Sena strong hold went with Sena while Mumbai was a neck to neck between Sena and BJP.
Photo Credit with gratitude from CNNNews18
There are some interesting trends emerging from the results.
The first and most obvious one is a complete decimation of congress. Congress has been on second position in Vidarbha municipalities because Sena and NCP do not have strong presence there. Otherwise in most places the second position has been taken by either Sena or NCP and not Congress.
A rather surprising result is the smaller Zila Parishad. BJP leads it by winning 343 Parishad while congress is third and Sena is fourth. BJP has shown a strong performance in semi urban / rural areas which have been strong hold of congress and NCP. While NCP retains its position in Zila Parishad seats, congress is at 3rd and Sena is at 4th position. This clearly shows an increasing base for BJP in small towns and rural areas.
Next is the surprising collapse of many a fort built by families. Traditionally Pawar family had strong hold in Pune, Thackery’s in Mumbai, Bhujbals in Nasik and Deshmukhs in Latur and nearby areas. BJP seems to be getting majority in Pune, Nasik and Latur ZP while giving neck to neck fight in Mumbai. Is this a wakeup call against dynastic politics? Interestingly in Parli too BJP lost seats which has been Munde family’s strong hold. Now Pankaja Munde has offered to resign after this loss in home turf.
The biggest lesson however, seems to be for Uddhav’s Sena. Uddhav Thackrey should now understand that he is no Balasaheb Thackrey. An aggressive speech with liberal spraying of cuss words from Balasaheb was easily tolerated nay appreciated by the masses. The reason was not that masses liked him speaking in that manner particularly but they saw a protector and a father figure in him. He first espoused Marathi cause when emotions were running high due to issue of unemployment with large inflow of non-Marathi workforce in Mumbai’s industrial scene. The issue started losing sheen by late 80s and early 90s as the industrial workers retired and their children started getting more and more global in their outlook. Balasaheb, being an astute politician immediately changed his line from Pro-Marathi to Pro-Hindu politics, thus growing his stature from “Marathi Savior” to “Hindu Savior”. But the junior Thackreys seem to have frozen in time and refuse to evolve. While the Marathi people have moved on from “Samyukta Maharashtra” days, Uddhav and Raj have not. This refusal to evolve has costed them Maharashtra and now Mumbai. If the reluctance to learn continues Sena has only one last fort of Thane to lose now.
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