BJP's 'back-up' triumvirate comes to the fore in Maharashtra elections

Pankaja Munde, Girish Mahajan, Chandrakant Patil share the political frame with Fadnavis

Amit Shah, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president and Union home minister, set in motion his poll campaign in Maharashtra with a rally on Dusshera at Sawargaon in Marathwada’s Beed district, calling attention to the significance of Pankaja Munde in the party’s political scheme. 

Pankaja is contesting from her old constituency, Parli, also in Beed. She draws her political heft as a legatee of her father, the late Gopinath Munde, who is credited with building the BJP in Maharashtra with his brother-in-law, Pramod Mahajan. Munde was regarded as political inheritor of the legacy of Bhagavan Baba, the Sawargaon-born pioneering reformer of the other backward classes (OBCs). 

If Sharad Pawar, Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief, once held undisputed sway over the Marathas, Munde emerged as the leader of the backward castes — which included the Vanjare, his community, the Mali, and the Dhangar — by assiduously working on the ground to consolidate the OBCs as a counterweight to the Marathas. “Bhagavan Baba wanted to create political space for the backward castes. He virtually anointed Munde to fulfil this vision,” a top BJP leader said. “The OBCs still form our core votes, although we have weighty leaders from other communities, too,” said a BJP source, contextualising the role of Pankaja, a senior minister in the state government.
 

If Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis earned his stripes by successfully completing his term, unfazed by pinpricks from the Shiv Sena, the BJP’s ally, and slap-downs from BJP veterans who resented being dictated to by a younger person, and goes into the elections as the undisputed number one, a BJP source stressed, “The attention Pankaja received from Shah is part of the strategy to subtly tell the Maharashtra leadership that no individual is the be-all and end-all.”

The presence of Amit Shah at a rally in Sawargaon underlines the significance of Pankaja Munde in the BJP

For a while, Pankaja, 40, gave the impression that she aimed for the top post in Maharashtra. Stung by a slew of controversies and insinuations about her vaulting ambition, she publicly stated she was not a chief ministerial aspirant. The dustups done and dusted, Pankaja, sources said, is entering battleground Maharashtra as “a leader in her own right”.

When Chandrakant Patil, revenue and PWD minister, was appointed Maharashtra BJP president, few in the party were surprised. Political lore has it that for a while Patil was Shah’s “role model”. Older by six years, Patil was a pro in the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad  (ABVP) when Shah took his first tentative steps and gleaned lessons in conducting an organisation from him. “While Patil might not have done anything remarkable as a minister, he is crucial to the BJP organisation,” said a political observer. He was handed the revenue department after his predecessor, Eknath Khadse, quit when he was scorched by corruption charges. Pankaja, too, was embroiled in graft allegations. “But it’s testimony to her political indispensability that she was allowed to continue,” a BJP source said.

Girish Mahajan is Devendra Fadnavis’ man

Patil went on to become the government’s number two, even as he is a member of the legislative council. But, his insistence to contest from the Kothrud seat in Pune, instead of his home town Kolhapur kicked up a stir, more so because Medha Kulkarni, the BJP’s sitting legislator, was rated “popular”. Local Brahmins were up in arms after Patil’s nomination because they considered Medha their own.  Patil also arrives in Kothrud with the “outsider” tag, which
he played down by saying he was Pune’s guardian minister and active in the city as an ABVP office-bearer. 

The last prong in Maharashtra’s “back-up” triumvirate is Girish Mahajan, who earned the Sankat Mochan (troubleshooter) moniker by becoming Fadnavis’ most trusted aide. Mahajan was called upon by the CM to identify, work upon, and spirit away the powerful local leaders from the Congress and the NCP and fortify the BJP’s support base among the Marathas, for instance. Mahajan was the one who negotiated with the Sena. He proved his utility when he was tasked to quell a farmers’ stir in March 2018, successfully delivered results in the Nashik, Jalgaon, and Dhule civic polls, and wrested the Palghar Lok Sabha seat for the BJP. 

Mahajan’s adept at playing realpolitik, the reason why Fadnavis nurtured his leadership was to undercut Khadse’s clout in north Maharashtra as an OBC face. Under Fadnavis’s tutelage, Mahajan proved he was more than an OBC face.

No longer in the team

 

Eknath Khadse

A prominent backward caste leader, Khadse was elected an MLA from Muktainagar six times. He was denied ticket this time, but the BJP compensated by fielding his daughter Rohini from there

Vinod Tawde

The sitting MLA from Borivali had to make way for Sunil Rane. Tawde said he would seek an explanation about why he was denied ticket

Raj Purohit

A six-time MLA from Mumbadevi and Colaba, he was not nominated this time. A 2015 sting operation purportedly showed Purohit saying unkind things about PM Narendra Modi and Amit Shah

Prakash Mehta 

From the Gujarati community, he won six times from Ghatkopar and was a minister in Fadnavis’ cabinet, but dropped after a Lokayukta report alleged his role in allot-ting out-of-turn building rights in slum rehabilitation projects
 

Chandrashekhar Bawankule

A three-time MLA from Kamptee, he was Nagpur’s guardian minister. He is said to be mentored by Nitin Gadkari. His wife, Jyoti, has filed papers as an Independent candidate from Kamptee