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By:

Akhilesh Sinha

25 June 2025 at 2:53:54 pm

Congress tries a ‘third’ hand

New Delhi: The BJP latest manoeuvre in elevating Nitin Nabin as the party’s national working president has had consequences in Maharashtra’s two biggest cities - Mumbai and Pune. The result has left the Congress party in a curiously ambivalent mood: quietly pleased by the opportunities created, yet wary of the turbulence ahead. In Maharashtra, the immediate beneficiary of the BJP’s move is Eknath Shinde’s Shiv Sena. The BJP’s organisational signal has strengthened its hand in the forthcoming...

Congress tries a ‘third’ hand

New Delhi: The BJP latest manoeuvre in elevating Nitin Nabin as the party’s national working president has had consequences in Maharashtra’s two biggest cities - Mumbai and Pune. The result has left the Congress party in a curiously ambivalent mood: quietly pleased by the opportunities created, yet wary of the turbulence ahead. In Maharashtra, the immediate beneficiary of the BJP’s move is Eknath Shinde’s Shiv Sena. The BJP’s organisational signal has strengthened its hand in the forthcoming elections to the BMC, Asia’s richest civic body, and in Pune, the state’s second city. For Shinde, whose legitimacy still rests on a contentious split with the party founded by Bal Thackeray, any reinforcement from the BJP’s formidable machine is welcome. For Uddhav Thackeray, who leads the rival Shiv Sena (UBT), the message is ominous. His party, once the natural custodian of Marathi pride in Mumbai, now faces the prospect of being squeezed between a BJP-backed Sena on one side and a revived Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) led by his cousin, Raj Thackeray, on the other. Shotgun Alliance That pressure has forced Thackeray into an awkward embrace with his estranged cousin. A reunion of the Thackeray clans, long rumoured and often aborted, has unsettled Thackeray’s MVA ally - the Congress. Signals from the party’s high command suggest a calculated distancing from Shiv Sena (UBT), particularly in Mumbai, where Congress leaders are exploring arrangements with smaller parties rather than committing to a Thackeray-led front. In Pune, the party’s pragmatism is even more pronounced. Quiet efforts are under way to entice Ajit Pawar’s NCP, currently aligned with the BJP, into a tactical understanding for the civic polls. Control of the municipal corporation, even without ideological harmony, is the immediate prize. For the embattled Congress, the civic polls offer a chance to do two things at once. First, by keeping a degree of separation from the Uddhav–Raj combine, it can strengthen its own organisational sinews, which have atrophied after years of playing junior partner. Secondly, it can allow the BJP–Shinde Sena and the Thackeray cousins to polarise the Marathi vote between them, leaving Congress to position itself as a ‘third pole.’ Such a strategy is particularly tempting in Mumbai. A tie-up with outfits like Prakash Ambedkar’s Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi (VBA) could help Congress consolidate minority, Dalit and tribal voters, constituencies it believes are more reliably mobilised without the ideological baggage of Thackeray’s Sena (UBT). Severing or loosening ties with Shiv Sena (UBT) would also simplify Congress’s messaging ahead of assembly elections elsewhere. In states such as West Bengal and Tamil Nadu, where polls loom next year, the party has historically preferred alliances that allow it to emphasise secular credentials and oppose the BJP without accommodating overtly Hindu nationalist partners. Mixed Signals The Congress’ internal signals, however, are mixed. When talk of a Thackeray reunion resurfaced, Maharashtra Congress leader Vijay Wadettiwar publicly welcomed it, arguing that Raj Thackeray’s limited but distinct vote share could help consolidate Marathi sentiment. Mumbai Congress chief Varsha Gaikwad was more circumspect, hinting that alliances with parties prone to street-level militancy deserved scrutiny. Wadettiwar swiftly clarified that decisions would rest with the party’s senior leadership, underscoring the centralised nature of Congress’s calculus. In Pune, meanwhile, senior leaders are reportedly engaged in discreet conversations with Ajit Pawar, whose defection from his uncle Sharad Pawar’s NCP last year still reverberates through state politics. The outline of a broader strategy is becoming visible. Congress appears content to let the BJP and Shinde’s Sena draw on non-Marathi and anti-dynasty voters, the Thackerays appeal to wounded Marathi pride while it quietly rebuilds among minorities and lower-caste groups. Mumbai Approach Mumbai’s demography lends some plausibility to this approach. Alongside its Marathi core, the city hosts millions of migrants from Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Jharkhand, a constituency that has increasingly gravitated towards the BJP. Raj Thackeray’s strident rhetoric against North Indians, once electorally potent, now risks narrowing his appeal and complicating Uddhav Thackeray’s efforts to broaden his base. None of this guarantees success for Congress. Playing the ‘third pole’ is a delicate art. Yet, the Congress, struggling for survival, has few illusions about sweeping victories. Its aim, for now, is more modest – it is to survive, to remain relevant, and to exploit the cracks opened by its rivals’ rivalries. In Maharashtra’s civic chessboard, that may be advantage enough.

Mumbai Choking

Mumbai likes to think of itself as different. Sea breezes, monsoon washouts and a supposedly lighter industrial footprint have long sustained the belief that air pollution is a north-Indian affliction and Delhi’s annual winter curse. The Bombay High Court has now punctured that complacency. In a stinging rebuke this week, it made clear that the city is not merely flirting with polluted air but sleepwalking towards a crisis of governance eerily familiar to the capital.


The court demanded basic compliance from the city’s responsible civic bodies. By the bench’s own assessment, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) and the Maharashtra Pollution Control Board (MPCB) have repeatedly failed to enforce their own rules.


This is not a case of missing laws or unclear guidelines. Mumbai has rules on dust suppression, on barricading construction sites with 35-foot metal sheets, on monitoring particulate matter, on worker safety. What it sorely lacks is enforcement with intent. The High Court’s questions cut to the heart of the matter: when did senior officials last step out of their offices? How many sensors actually work? Why was nothing done if so many are out of order? The answers suggest a bureaucracy more comfortable with paperwork than pollution control.


The comparison with Delhi is unavoidable. Years of cosmetic monitoring, selective enforcement and seasonal panic allowed a manageable problem to metastasise into a public-health emergency in the national capital. By the time courts intervened with construction bans, odd-even schemes and school closures, the damage was entrenched. The BMC ought to realise that Mumbai is not immune to the same fate.


Perhaps the most searing indictment concerned construction workers These impoverished migrant workers are expected to inhale the city’s growth without even minimal protection. That the right to health had to be restated, almost pedagogically, says much about official priorities. A city that prides itself on resilience seems content to externalise the cost of its ambition onto the lungs of its poorest citizens.


The BMC countered the court with statistics, claiming that over 400 show-cause notices and 148 stop-work orders had been issued since November. However, it doesn’t understand that enforcement is not a function of paperwork but of deterrence. If violations are routine, penalties must be painful enough to change behaviour. If sensors fail, accountability must follow. If data exists, it must be centralised, transparent and public.


Mumbai still has time. Its pollution levels are not yet as lethal as Delhi’s winter peaks. But that window is narrowing. Construction is accelerating, vehicular density is rising and regulatory fatigue is setting in. Courts can prod, but they cannot govern daily. That task falls to civic institutions, above all the BMC which must decide whether it wants to be remembered as a custodian or a bystander before India’s financial capital drifts towards Delhi’s smog-soaked fate. Delhi’s story is a cautionary tale written in smog. Mumbai would do well to read it now, before the air turns unreadable.

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