Abhijit Joshi

The Supreme Court’s verdict jolts Maharashtra into election mode, turning the delayed civic polls into a decisive test of power, pride and survival. The Supreme Court has finally cleared the way for the long-delayed local body, municipal corporation and nagar panchayat elections in Maharashtra. With the court firmly stating that the remaining elections must be held without breaching the 50 percent reservation limit, the long-standing deadlock has ended. This verdict now pushes all political...

The Congress’ tie-up with the Vanchit Bahujan Aaghadi tests whether old social coalitions can be rebuilt from the panchayat upwards. The forthcoming Maharashtra local bodies’ polls for Nagar Parishads and Nagar Panchayats, normally governed by hyper-local quarrels and ward-level patronage, have become unusually momentous. The reason is a political experiment where the Congress party has chosen to ally with the Vanchit Bahujan Aaghadi (VBA), Prakash Ambedkar’s Ambedkarite outfit, in several...

The Congress dithers and the BJP calculates as the Thackeray cousins weigh their next move as civic polls loom. Politics in Maharashtra has long been a study in timing - the art of knowing when to provoke, when to retreat, and when to deploy the nuisance value of allies and adversaries. For decades, the Congress excelled at this game. In Maharashtra, this mastery produced a delicate choreography with Balasaheb Thackeray’s Shiv Sena. Often derided as the Congress’s ‘B-team,’ or ‘Vasant Sena’...