Maharashtra polls: Both alliances in conundrums over final candidate list

There is no sign that either alliance in Maharashtra is ready with a list of candidates for the Assembly election

Assembly elections to the 288-member Maharashtra Vidhan Sabha are by the middle of November. Exuding confidence, Maharashtra Pradesh Congress President Nana Patole said last week: “All the problems have been solved. The Congress will contest the larger number of seats (in the alliance). We will announce our candidates on Vijayadashami (October 12).” He was referring to a composite list of candidates of the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA), which has the Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray, or UBT) and the Nationalist Congress Party (Sharad Chandra Pawar, or SCP), apart from the Congress and smaller parties as its members.
 

On October 9, Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader and Ajit Pawar associate Praful Patel said the Bharatiya Janata Party-led Mahayuti alliance (comprising the BJP, Shiv Sena, and the NCP along with some smaller parties) would “announce its first list of 235 candidates on Saturday, October 12”. Vijayadashami came and went and even a day after that, there is no sign that either alliance is ready with a list of candidates for an election that could be announced any day.
 

The problem can be summed up in one word: Split.
 

Both alliances have two divided parties. While the Election Commission of India has arbitrated and has ruled on the name and symbol of the split parties, the squabble is over the relative strength of the factions and how this should be judged: Should its pre-split status be respected? Or post-split?
 

Adding another dimension, Prithviraj Chavan, former Maharashtra CM and a Congressman, said: “The Congress won the maximum seats in the recent Lok Sabha polls in Maharashtra, and it will repeat its performance in the Assembly polls. The next chief minister of Maharashtra will be from the Congress.”
 

But a chief minister can be elected only if the party contests and wins the largest number of seats. So how will the seats be divided? “Winnability will be the criterion for distributing tickets,” he said.
 

Winnability is one problem. How will this be judged? On the basis of the pre-split result, or the post-split result, or the Lok Sabha poll result? Chavan was unwilling to spell out the details. This is not the only issue. It is also the strike rate. How many seats did parties fight and how many of those did they win?
 

In the Mahayuti, the nature of the discussions is no different. Union Home Minister Amit Shah was in Mumbai last week to iron out wrinkles and BJP sources say the party will contest around 150 seats, becoming the “senior” partner in the alliance. But the BJP would like to use the Eknath Shinde faction of the Sena strategically against its previous party colleagues. “We want to use a thorn to take out the thorn,” said a BJP member from Maharashtra. So, in Mumbai and its suburbs — wherever the two Sena factions are strong — the BJP would like to deploy them against each other and keep its own forces in reserve.

Obviously, this is causing resentment in some quarters in the BJP. This is just one example of the size of the problem.
 

BJP state President Chandrashekhar Bawankule strongly refutes this. “Like the last elections, this time too, the BJP will contest in more seats in the Vidarbha region while in the rest of the regions there will be proper seat distribution. Hindutva is our main agenda. Ticket distribution will not happen based on caste and community but merit and the winnability criterion only,” he said.

The setback faced by the Congress in Haryana has not helped the situation. Even before the full result was out, in Maharashtra, SS UBT Spokesperson Priyanka Chaturvedi was on camera, demanding the Congress treat it with more respect. “The Congress needs to think about its strategy because wherever there is a direct fight with the BJP, the Congress gets weakened,” she said.
 

Congress spokesman Jairam Ramesh didn’t bother to put a gloss on his rebuttal. “I would like to remind (everyone) that the Congress was the number 1 party in Maharashtra during the Lok Sabha elections. There is a coalition dharma in alliance and any talks should take place between partners and not through the media,” said Ramesh, without naming anyone.
 

Although he holds the finance portfolio, Ajit Pawar left a Cabinet meeting midway and denied he had “walked out” because of any differences with Chief minister Eknath Shinde. His clarification gave the game away. He said: “The Cabinet has the right to overrule the finance department.”
 

The strains are telling as old friends and new enemies face each other in the battlefield.