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By:

Abhijit Mulye

21 August 2024 at 11:29:11 am

Shinde dilutes demand

Likely to be content with Deputy Mayor’s post in Mumbai Mumbai: In a decisive shift that redraws the power dynamics of Maharashtra’s urban politics, the standoff over the prestigious Mumbai Mayor’s post has ended with a strategic compromise. Following days of resort politics and intense backroom negotiations, the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena has reportedly diluted its demand for the top job in the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), settling instead for the Deputy Mayor’s post. This...

Shinde dilutes demand

Likely to be content with Deputy Mayor’s post in Mumbai Mumbai: In a decisive shift that redraws the power dynamics of Maharashtra’s urban politics, the standoff over the prestigious Mumbai Mayor’s post has ended with a strategic compromise. Following days of resort politics and intense backroom negotiations, the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena has reportedly diluted its demand for the top job in the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), settling instead for the Deputy Mayor’s post. This development, confirmed by high-ranking party insiders, follows the realization that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) effectively ceded its claims on the Kalyan-Dombivali Municipal Corporation (KDMC) to protect the alliance, facilitating a “Mumbai for BJP, Kalyan for Shinde” power-sharing formula. The compromise marks a complete role reversal between the BJP and the Shiv Sena. Both the political parties were in alliance with each other for over 25 years before 2017 civic polls. Back then the BJP used to get the post of Deputy Mayor while the Shiv Sena always enjoyed the mayor’s position. In 2017 a surging BJP (82 seats) had paused its aggression to support the undivided Shiv Sena (84 seats), preferring to be out of power in the Corporation to keep the saffron alliance intact. Today, the numbers dictate a different reality. In the recently concluded elections BJP emerged as the single largest party in Mumbai with 89 seats, while the Shinde faction secured 29. Although the Shinde faction acted as the “kingmaker”—pushing the alliance past the majority mark of 114—the sheer numerical gap made their claim to the mayor’s post untenable in the long run. KDMC Factor The catalyst for this truce lies 40 kilometers north of Mumbai in Kalyan-Dombivali, a region considered the impregnable fortress of Eknath Shinde and his son, MP Shrikant Shinde. While the BJP performed exceptionally well in KDMC, winning 50 seats compared to the Shinde faction’s 53, the lotter for the reservation of mayor’s post in KDMC turned the tables decisively in favor of Shiv Sena there. In the lottery, the KDMC mayor’ post went to be reserved for the Scheduled Tribe candidate. The BJP doesn’t have any such candidate among elected corporatros in KDMC. This cleared the way for Shiv Sena. Also, the Shiv Sena tied hands with the MNS in the corporation effectively weakening the Shiv Sena (UBT)’s alliance with them. Party insiders suggest that once it became clear the BJP would not pursue the KDMC Mayor’s chair—effectively acknowledging it as Shinde’s fiefdom—he agreed to scale down his demands in the capital. “We have practically no hope of installing a BJP Mayor in Kalyan-Dombivali without shattering the alliance locally,” a Mumbai BJP secretary admitted and added, “Letting the KDMC become Shinde’s home turf is the price for securing the Mumbai Mayor’s bungalow for a BJP corporator for the first time in history.” The formal elections for the Mayoral posts are scheduled for later this month. While the opposition Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi (MVA)—led by the Shiv Sena (UBT)—has vowed to field candidates, the arithmetic heavily favors the ruling alliance. For Eknath Shinde, accepting the Deputy Mayor’s post in Mumbai is a tactical retreat. It allows him to consolidate his power in the MMR belt (Thane and Kalyan) while remaining a partner in Mumbai’s governance. For the BJP, this is a crowning moment; after playing second fiddle in the BMC for decades, they are poised to finally install their own “First Citizen” of Mumbai.

Konkan’s Conundrums


Konkan’s Conundrums

As the countdown to November 20 grows louder, all eyes are on Raigad district in the Konkan, which has become a classic microcosm of Maharashtra’s shifting political alignments in wake of the splits within the Shiv Sena in 2022 and the NCP in July 2023.


In the Assembly segments of Shrivardhan and Mahad, the prestige of tall regional leaders is on the line. At the heart of the Shrivardhan contest is Aditi Tatkare, the incumbent MLA from the ruling Ajit Pawar-led Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and daughter of Raigad MP Sunil Tatkare.


The Minister for Women and Child Development in the ruling Mahayuti, she successfully held the constituency – a Tatkare family borough – in the 2019 Assembly polls, overcoming fierce competition and the historical dominance of the then undivided Shiv Sena in the area.


The darkest cloud on Aditi’s horizon has been Bharat Gogawale, the vocal whip of CM Eknath Shinde’s Shiv Sena who, hitherto, had been the fiercest opponent of taking the Ajit Pawar-led NCP into the Mahayuti’s bandwagon. Gogawale had vociferously opposed Aditi’s appointment as Raigad’s Guardian Minister last year. The edge to Gogawale’s anger was made keener when he did not get a ministerial berth in the Mahayuti cabinet expansion – all the more reason for him to channelize his spleen on Aditi Tatkare.


Yet, after more than a year, tempers appear to have cooled for the sake of strategic objectives. Aditi has said that Gogawale and the Shinde Sena did aid in her father’s victory in the Lok Sabha election.


Gogawale, himself no mean satrap, is seeking re-election for the fourth consecutive time from the neighbouring Assembly segment of Mahad. ‘Bharat sheth’ – as he is popularly known – claims that the Mahayuti will claim all Assembly seats in Raigad, implying that the schism between himself and the Tatkares are bygone.


CM Shinde’s pacification of his party colleague came in form of Gogawale’s appointment as Chairman of the Maharashtra State Road Transport Corporation (MSRTC), with a bid to kill two birds with one stone: give his Shiv Sena greater leverage in local constituencies, especially in the coastal Konkan region and make sure allies within the Mahayuti, that is his party and the NCP work as smoothly as possible.


All that said, the key question remains whether the Tatkare family’s political legacy can endure the test of factionalism and changing alliances and whether the Sena and the NCP have campaigned as wholeheartedly for each other as they claim.


Meanwhile, Guhagar Assembly segment in Konkan’s Ratnagiri is shaping up to be a humdinger: Uddhav Thackeray’s point man, the mercurial Bhaskar Jadhav, who is seeking a fourth term as the MVA’s (SS-UBT) candidate, is up against a determined coalition of ruling BJP-Shiv Sena forces who have propped Rajesh Bendal, a former municipal council president of Guhagar.


Shinde’s Shiv Sena, which zeroed on Bendal, himself from the Ajit Pawar-led NCP, has solicited the aid of former BJP MLA Vinay Natu who was an eager aspirant for the Mahayuti ticket for the Guhagar seat. However, the nomination ultimately went to Bendal, with the approval of Natu, though. The Mahayuti this time is hell-bent on supplanting Jadhav. November 23 will tell whether their efforts succeed.

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