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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.

Twisted Allegiance

Updated: Feb 10, 2025

Few nations exhibit a more perverted sense of history than Bangladesh. That a mob in Dhaka could vandalise and set ablaze the residence and memorial of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the man who led the country to independence, defies belief. It is not merely an act of hooliganism but a grotesque betrayal of Bangladesh’s ideals that birthed the nation in 1971. That this desecration was not met with universal condemnation suggests a deeper malaise within the country’s national consciousness - one that is increasingly shaped by religious radicalism, historical revisionism and a perverse affinity for its former oppressor, Pakistan.


The protesters claimed that the house, long associated with Mujibur Rahman’s family, was allegedly a symbol of ‘authoritarianism’ and ‘fascism.’ Exiled writer Taslima Nasreen aptly observed that the last trace of Bangladesh’s founder had been burned to ashes.


The timing of the attack is telling. It occurred just a day after Sheikh Hasina, the ousted prime minister and Mujibur’s daughter, called on her party workers to protest against the interim government led by Muhammad Yunus.


This was not the first such act of historical vandalism. In August last year, during the student-led uprising that toppled Hasina’s government, the same residence was torched.


The mob’s justification for its actions, the claim that Mujibur’s house represented fascism, is laughable. Mujib was no saint and his rule was marked by misgovernance, while his attempt at a one-party state in 1975 was ill-advised. But to equate him with authoritarianism while turning a blind eye to the regimes that followed, including the military juntas of the 1980s and the creeping Islamism of recent years, is intellectually dishonest. Worse, it betrays a fundamental ignorance of history.


More disturbing is the newfound warmth between Dhaka and Islamabad. In September last year, Yunus met with Pakistan’s then-prime minister, Shahbaz Sharif, to discuss the forging of a strategic relationship between the two nations. This is the same Pakistan whose military butchered up to three million Bangladeshis, raped hundreds of thousands of women, and left behind a trail of destruction that the country is yet to recover from. That Dhaka should now seek rapprochement with its former oppressor, rather than demanding an apology and reparations, is an insult to those who fought for its freedom.


Equally shameful is Bangladesh’s ingratitude toward India. In 1971, India took in millions of refugees, armed and trained the Mukti Bahini, and waged a war that liberated Bangladesh. Without India’s intervention, the Pakistani army’s genocide would have continued unchecked. Yet today, anti-India sentiment runs deep in Bangladeshi political discourse, stoked by Islamist groups and opportunistic politicians. Dhaka’s willingness to flirt with China, despite Beijing’s historical support for Pakistan during the war, further underscores its strategic myopia.


The destruction of Mujib’s memorial signals a dangerous drift toward historical amnesia. Those who cheer the erasure of Bangladesh’s founding legacy should remember that history has a way of exacting its revenge.

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