Is BJP losing the plot in Maharashtra? Recent panchayat polls suggest so

Life has not been good for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Maharashtra since it lost power in the state in 2019. The outcome of the panchayat polls is the latest setback the BJP suffered after the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) coalition government, helmed by the Shiv Sena with the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and the Congress as the other constituents, was installed. As the single largest party in the Maharashtra legislature, the BJP was unable to overwhelm the MVA as it initially hoped. 

Although the rural body elections were not fought on party symbols, going by the backing that the panel of candidates received, the MVA won a majority of the panchayats, giving the alliance a clear edge in the next polls to elect sarpanches who will head these panchayats. Devendra Fadnavis, former chief minister and Opposition leader, was quoted as saying: “The BJP contested against three parties. Even then we gained success and that can be attributed to the pro-people policies of the Narendra Modi government during the pandemic.” A Maharashtra BJP source’s wry response to Fadnavis’s explanation was: “It’s a pathetic reflection of our over-dependence on the Centre to fight even a grass root election. Where are our state leaders? There’s no fire left in their stomach.”

While Udayan Raje Bhosale and Radhakrishna Patil, NCP and Congress heavyweights from Satara and Ahmednagar who joined the BJP before the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, saw the villages they purportedly controlled fall into the rivals’ hands, Chandrakant Patil, the Maharashtra party president, was another casualty. Of course, Congress leaders Prithviraj Chavan and Ashok Chavan lost control over panchayats in their Karad and Nanded fiefs, but bolstered by the overall gains, Anil Deshmukh, home minister and NCP leader, stated: “We will continue under the MVA banner.” The BJP’s only consolation was in the joust to become the single largest party — it was marginally ahead of the Sena with the NCP a close third.

In December 2020, the BJP faced another unexpected reversal when it forfeited the Nagpur and Pune graduate constituency seats in the legislative council elections to the MVA. It was a blow to the big leaguers Fadnavis and Nitin Gadkari, Union minister, who considered Nagpur as their political fief, as well as to Chandrakant Patil and Prakash Javadekar, another central minister, for whom Pune is turf. “In 58 years, the BJP never lost Nagpur. The constituency was nurtured and built by Fadnavis’s father, Gangadharrao before Gadkari stepped in,” said Sudhir Suryawanshi, the author of Checkmate: How the BJP Won and Lost Maharashtra. 

BJP leader Sudhir Mungantiwar conceded: “We relied on our previous success and became distracted.” Ashish Shelar, Vandre West MLA and former Mumbai BJP chief, said: “Certain calculations didn’t work for us. When three parties came together, caste became the principal criterion for the voters.”

Pune’s loss was a personal reflection on the Maharashtra BJP president’s inability to hold on to a seat that he represented for two terms before quitting to contest the 2019 Assembly election.

Emboldened by the MVA’s current durability and pushed by a desire to give the BJP comeuppance for its alleged post-poll manoeuvres, Uddhav Thackeray, chief minister, recently diminished the state security covers that Fadnavis, his wife Amruta, and daughter Divija enjoyed, as well as those of Patil and Shelar. “Uddhav is doing political vendetta. He took away Fadnavis’s bullet-proof car within a week after the review committee gave its report,” alleged Kandivali East MLA Atul Bhatkhalkar. Fadnavis wore a brave visage and undertook frenetic road trips through Maharashtra after the downgrade to prove a political point.

What does the MVA’s gamesmanship, or more precisely the Sena’s, augur for the BJP’s future and of a prospect of reaching out to its former ally of long years again should circumstances compel? According to Suryawanshi, the BJP’s main problem was “leadership or lack of it”. “It has no credible face to bring the workers and the voters together. There’s no mass leader after (Gopinath) Munde. Fadnavis is an organisational person. It was power that kept the BJP together earlier.” A state party source said: “At this moment, the real leader is Gadkari because of his image as a minister who delivers and his roots in the party organisation.” Shelar contested both the observations, adding, “Fadnavis is the only pan-Maharashtra leader today. The MVA together doesn’t have a single face that clicks everywhere in the state.”

It’s perhaps the realisation that Fadnavis was there to stay that goaded the MVA to single him for attack. Former minister Girish Mahajan, who is regarded as close to Fadnavis, was charged in an extortion case that dated back to January 2018 over a dispute to control an education cooperative in Jalgaon. The Bombay High Court restrained the Pune police for taking “coercive steps” against Mahajan. “Such vendetta politics has no impact on our workers’ morale,” claimed Mahajan.

On the possibility of re-aligning with the Sena, Bhatkhalkar said: “It’s not even a matter of discussion. We will fight solo (in the next election) and trump the MVA.”

Maharashtra’s next battle will be staged in 2022 for supremacy over the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), India’s richest civic body. The Sena-BJP ruled over the BMC for decades, so the polls will be a test for both.