Explained: The Reasoning Behind BJP's Three Choices For Rajya Sabha From Maharashtra

The central election committee of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on 14 February 2024 announced its candidates for Rajya Sabha from Gujarat and Maharashtra.

From its Maharashtra quota, the saffron party has surprised everyone once again by choosing Medha Kulkarni and Dr Ajit Gopchade along with the recent entrant from Congress — Ashok Chavan — to be its voice in the upper house of Parliament.

It is often said by many senior BJP leaders in lighter vein that names mentioned by poll pundits and media professionals as prospective candidates from the party are deliberately denied a chance to keep its cadre grounded.

According to them, it is the candidates who like to remain low key and aren’t much talked about, whom the party rewards.

However, this time the speculations made in the regional media have turned true, especially in the case of Chavan and Kulkarni with the other surprise name being that of Dr Gopchade. Analysts say, there is certainly a strong message behind the choice of these names.

Loyalty Shall Be Rewarded

Although Pune city has a strong network of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and has historically been home to Hindutva-ideologues like V D Savarkar, Rambhau Mhalgi and G V Behere, the city politics has been traditionally dominated by the Congress and its ally Nationalist Congress Party (NCP).

While the municipal corporation remained with the Congress, BJP’s presence in terms of the assembly seats on the other hand had been limited to the Kasba Peth and Parvati assembly seats.

The situation changed only after 2014 when the party won a majority of the six assembly seats, with one of the newly won seats being that of Kothrud.

It was Medha Kulkarni, BJP’s three time municipal corporator, who had fought hard against the incumbent Shiv Sena candidate Chandrakant Mokate and managed to bag the seat with a crushing majority of 64,662 votes.

However, come 2019, Kulkarni was replaced with Chandrakant Patil as the party candidate from the seat. This was done ostensibly because Patil who hails from Kolhapur couldn’t have managed to get himself elected from his home turf.

Unlike Kolhapur, where mostly big-wigs associated with co-operative dairies and sugar factories win, Kothrud, one of the most-urbanised constituencies in Pune with a strong network of RSS was seen as a safe seat to get Patil elected.

Although Patil who replaced Kulkarni is also a loyal footsoldier of the party, denial of candidature to the latter then was seen as an attempt to marginalise the left-over stock of Brahmin leaders in BJP with the increasing influx of Maratha leaders from opposition parties.

This was highlighted by the Marathi print media especially more so as Kulkarni, apart from hailing from a middle-class family, had no family political legacy to fall back on.

Considering her popularity among the masses, opposition parties had then attempted to poach her by promising a ticket for the Kothrud seat.

However, despite publicly expressing her displeasure over being sidelined, Kulkarni firmly remained with the BJP. Analysts say that it is this fierce loyalty drilled into old-timers like Kulkarni that keeps them with the party.

Eventually, with the Rajya Sabha candidature now, Kulkarni’s political ‘vanvaas’ now seems to have come to an end.

However, analysts point out that there’s more to it than just rewarding the loyal footsoldier.

Sociological studies in the past have shown that Pune city has Marathas and Brahmins in equal numbers. After the sitting Lok Sabha representative Girish Bapat passed away last year, the Maratha lobby in the party’s city unit has been pushing hard for former city mayor Murlidhar Mohol’s candidature.

Considering this tricky caste arithmetic, BJP has struck a fine balance this time by placating the Brahmin vote-bank and clearing way for candidature of a Maratha candidate at the same time for the upcoming Lok Sabha polls.

A Signal For Ambitious Netas To Fall In Line

Among the other prospective names that were being mentioned by the poll pundits were that of former education minister Vinod Tawde and Other Backward Class (OBC) leader Pankaja Munde. While Tawde, who had been elected to the assembly from the Borivali seat in 2014, was denied ticket subsequently in 2019, Munde was defeated in 2019 from Parli by her cousin Dhananjay Munde.

Considering that Tawde has an Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) background and since Pankaja Munde hails from the influential Vanjari community, it was expected that both will be nominated this time. Their names had come up even last time as the prospective faces during the last legislative council elections.

However, yet again, both have failed to make it to any of the law-making houses.

On the other hand, BJP has surprised everyone this time by choosing Dr Ajit Gopchade, a low-key party functionary from Nanded as its Rajya Sabha face apart from Medha Kulkarni and Ashok Chavan.

Dr Gopchade, who has his roots in the RSS and ABVP, is seen as a skillful organiser and a hard-core party loyalist who had participated in karseva at Ayodhya in 1992. A paediatrician by profession, he has worked his way up by serving on several positions as a student activist in ABVP before being inducted into BJP by Gopinath Munde and Pramod Mahajan.

Analysts believe that by elevating lesser known old-timers like Dr Bhagwat Karad a few years back as the Union state minister for finance and Dr Ajit Gopchade now, the party has sent a strong message to dynasts within the party.

Pankaja Munde is said to have fallen out of favour for having been over-ambitious by clamouring for chief ministership through her supporters in the past and for constantly banking on the legacy of her father Gopinath Munde.

“To prevent any damage to the OBC votes that might have been caused by denying a Rajya Sabha or a MLC seat to Munde, party very shrewdly chose an OBC face like Karad then and Gopchade, a Lingayat now. Notably, both hail from the same region of Marathwada to which Munde belongs,” a senior Pune-based political journalist, who did not wish to be named, said.

While Chavan's candidature is being seen as a signal to opposition leaders in dilemma over joining BJP, that their cross-overs will be rewarded, Tawde's case seems to be the same as that of Munde.

“Tawde is a skillful organiser. However, his supporters had started canvassing him as the chief minister in 2014 even before vote-counting could be completed. Thus by promoting him as a general secretary at the national level now but denying him candidature, the party has in a way asked all leaders to fall in line and prove their mettle through work alone,” he said.