Rane, Shinde, Pawar And Now Chavan: Has BJP Covered All Bases In Maharashtra Just In Time For 2024 Contest?

In what may be considered as the third major exit from the Indian National Congress (INC), former Maharashtra chief minister and its ex-state unit chief Ashok Chavan formally joined Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on 13 February 2024.

Chavan is the third senior leader in the past two months who has left the Congress after former Union minister Milind Deora and former Bandra West Member of Legislative Assembly (MLA) Baba Siddique joined Shiv Sena (Shinde) and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) respectively.

The exit of Ashok Chavan, who is expected to be fielded as a Rajya Sabha candidate by the BJP, is being considered as a huge setback to Congress. The grand old party has been fast losing its base in the state to its ally the NCP and the ruling BJP.

After Chavan’s resignation from his party membership as well as from the legislative assembly, INC’s state unit in-charge Ramesh Chennithala arrived in Mumbai to convene a meeting to prevent further defections. However, experts and even Congress leaders believe that it is too late for such damage control.

While there seems no end to the exits from the Congress, BJP has continued to witness a large influx of regional satraps like Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil, Narayan Rane, Harshwardhan Patil over the years.

Added to that now is the support of Shiv Sena (Shinde) and NCP (Ajit Pawar). By managing to poach a big name like Chavan from Congress, the party now seems to have emboldened its position in the state in the run-up to the Lok Sabha as well as Vidhan Sabha polls.

What’s behind the recent exits from Congress in Maharashtra?

Speaking out his mind on Chavan’s exit from Congress, former Mumbai Congress unit chief Sanjay Nirupam said that Chavan was upset with the way the senior hierarchy of the party had been functioning.

In a post on the social media platform X, Nirupam said, “Ashok Chavan was definitely an asset for the party. Some are calling him a liability, some are holding central agencies responsible, all this is a hasty reaction. He was basically very upset with the working style of a leader from Maharashtra."

Nirupam further said that Chavan’s exit could have been prevented had the party’s senior leadership in Delhi addressed the latter’s concerns in time.

"His leaving Congress is a big loss for us. No one will be able to compensate for it. The responsibility of taking care of him was ours alone," he added.

Nirupam’s statements only reaffirm the prevalence of an intense in-party rivalry in the Maharashtra unit of the Congress party. While former chief minister Prithviraj Chavan is considered to be neutral, the faction led by Balasaheb Thorat and the present state unit chief Nana Patole is said to have been against the interests of the Ashok Chavan faction.

Political analysts believe that apart from the lure of securing their political positions, senior Congress dynasts are leaving in droves because of former state unit chief Thorat.

It is being said that by taking advantage of his closeness with the party ‘high-command,’ Thorat, an eight-time MLA from Sangamner, instead of giving the party a turn around, has been securing the interests of his family.

For instance, party cadre allege that Thorat had helped his nephew Satyajeet Tambe win from Nashik in the graduate constituency polls held last year, despite the fact that Tambe had contested as an independent against the Congress-led Maha Vikas Aghadi candidate.

Some also allege that leaders like Chavan and Deora became disillusioned with the Congress after Patole, who had switched to BJP before returning back to INC, was made the state unit chief.

How does Ashok Chavan’s entry help BJP?

Senior journalist and a keen state politics observer Ganesh alias Bhau Torsekar is of the opinion that the main intention of BJP to poach Ashok Chavan must have been to give a final blow to the state unit of the Congress considering the several key elections ahead.

“The senior leadership of the BJP in the state as well as the Centre knows very well that Chavan is not a mass base leader. However, the damage an exit of a former chief minister does to a party’s morale is huge, that too when the ongoing Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra is supposed to end here, in Mumbai,” Torsekar said.

Ashok Chavan hails from a politically influential family from Nanded in Marathwada. His father Shankarrao Chavan had served as the chief minister of Maharashtra twice and was the Union Home Minister at the time of his death.

Speaking on the electoral benefit the BJP might get with the former chief minister’s entry, Torsekar said that the party had managed to ease its way for the upcoming Lok Sabha polls in yet another constituency.

"Chavan comes from the Nanded Lok Sabha constituency which comprises six assembly seats. As of now, two seats are with the BJP and one is with Shiv Sena (Shinde). Remaining three were with Congress. Now with Ashok Chavan’s exit and resignation from his seat, the Congress tally stands reduced to two. This change in political equation will eventually help them (here, BJP) in the Lok Sabha polls," Torsekar added.

In the previous Lok Sabha elections of 2019, BJP is said to have managed to win the traditionally Congress-dominated Nanded Lok Sabha seat due to a split in the latter’s minority and Dalit voter base. This split was a result of the Prakash Ambedkar led Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi (VBA) fielding its own candidate against both mainstream parties.

While BJP’s Prataprao Patil Chikhlikar grabbed 43 per cent of the total votes polled, Ashok Chavan had given a tough fight by bagging a substantial 40 per cent votes.

Analysts believe that with the VBA this time having joined the Congress-led INDI Alliance and Chavan along with his supporters now in BJP, the saffron party might manage to retain the Nanded seat with relative ease.

Has the BJP’s character changed with the mass influx of opposition leaders?

Key to Maharashtra’s politics lies in the co-operatives. Several co-operative sugar factories and banks in the state are predominantly dominated by leaders from the Maratha caste.

While in the past, to break-free of the ‘bhatji-shetji’ image, the party implemented the MaDhaV pattern and expanded its reach among the Other Backward Classes (OBCs), a large chunk of the Maratha voter-base remained with NCP and Congress. This has been undone in the past five years with the entry of several heavy-weight Maratha leaders from the Congress.

For instance, Radhakrishna Vikhe-Patil, who had held many heavyweight portfolios in Congress-led governments, comes from the influential Vikhe-Patil family that controls several sugar factories and the Pravara group of educational institutions in the Ahmednagar district.

On the eve of 2019 Lok Sabha polls, Vikhe-Patil’s son Sujay joined BJP and subsequently won from the Ahmednagar constituency. This was followed by Vikhe-Patil senior's entry into the party, who subsequently also managed to retain his Vidhan Sabha seat of Shirdi.

Apart from this, by poaching Narayan Rane, also a Maratha, the party seems to have eyed the assembly seats in the coastal Konkan region which until now have been dominated by Shiv Sena and some pockets held by NCP along with the Peasants and Workers Party.

This also seems to have been the case with Ashok Chavan in Marathwada. Despite having produced stalwarts like the OBC leader Gopinath Munde and a strategist like Pramod Mahajan, the region hasn’t swayed entirely in the BJP’s favour until now. The entry of a Maratha face like Chavan, might potentially help the party consolidate votes across assembly seats in Nanded and Hingoli districts.

But such entry of opposition leaders, especially those who had allegations of corruption — like Chavan and an alliance with Ajit Pawar’s NCP hasn’t gone down well with party’s old-timers and loyalists.

For instance, Ajit Pawar as alleged by BJP in the past, is said to have been involved in the massive Maharashtra co-operative bank and irrigation scam. Ashok Chavan on the other hand had faced allegations in the infamous Adarsh Scam for securing flats meant for Kargil War widows in the name of his family members.

As of now, the Bombay High Court has restrained investigation agencies from questioning Chavan further in the case while the investigations in the banking scam involving Pawar are moving at a snail’s pace.

In this regard, veteran observers like Torsekar are of the opinion that although several leaders facing allegations of corruption have joined BJP, they won’t be able to dominate the party’s decision making or influence its policies.

"It is true that there is rising resentment among supporters with the entry of tainted leaders. Congress along with NCP could dominate state politics for years because it had a large number of such influential dynasts and feudals. With this lot moving to BJP, in that sense BJP has become a Congress of its own now," Torsekar said.

However, at the same time, Torsekar believes that BJP is also not a Congress because all senior key decision makers in the party even today have either been Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh workers or an Akhil Bharatiya Vidhyarthi Parishad activist in the past.

"In fact, all three leaders at the apex in the present — Narendra Modi, Amit Shah and J P Nadda — are all swayamsevaks. This is also the case in Maharashtra unit of BJP. If at all BJP has done anything by letting in such dynasts from opposition and splitting Shiv Sena and NCP, is filling in the gaps and undoing resistance,” he added.