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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.

The Saffron Warriors

Updated: Oct 22, 2024

Saffron Warriors

When Uddhav Thackeray took oath as the 18th chief minister of Maharashtra on November 28, 2019, he proclaimed that he had fulfilled his late father’s wish to have a ‘Shiv Sainik’ seated in the highest executive office in the Government of Maharashtra. It surprised many to see members of the Thackeray family taking up a constitutional post as Uddhav’s son, Aditya, followed him into the council of ministers. For over four decades since he founded the Shiv Sena as a political party, Bal Thackeray never aimed to hold any office. He had proudly claimed he that was the “remote control” that controlled the actions of the chief minister when the Shiv Sena and BJP had formed the government between 1995 and 1999. The Thackeray dynasty, until 2019, was seen as the force behind the scenes, one that had full authority but no answerability.


Bal Thackeray, one among the eight children of writer and social reformer Prabhodhankar or Keshav Thackeray, founded the Shiv Sena on June 19, 1966. He had started his career as a cartoonist in the Free Press Journal and later went on to publish Marmik, a weekly in Marathi. A cartoonist par excellence and journalist, Thackeray used his weekly to comment on social and political issues and started his career in public life by leading a movement against migrants and fighting for the rights of the sons-of-the-soil. Therein lay the birth of the Shiv Sena, a party that later went on to scale great heights and reach the chambers of power in the Centre and in the state.


Thackeray anointed Uddhav as his heir in January 2003 at the party’s conclave. He took over as the ‘pakshapramukh’ and after Raj’s departure from the party, Sena workers rallied around Uddhav. In 2010, Thackeray launched his grandson Aaditya at a grand party event and handed over the reins of the Yuva Sena or the youth wing of the party to him.


 The father-son duo kept their flock together in elections even after the death of the senior Thackeray in 2012, winning the cash-rich Mumbai municipal corporation and state elections with the BJP. In 2019, in a surprise turn of events, Uddhav was named Chief Minister of Maharashtra as part of a post-poll alliance with the Congress and Nationalist Congress Party.


 His party split when senior leader Eknath Shinde walked away with legislators in 2022.

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