Kasba Peth Setback To BJP: Separating Facts From Myths

In a significant setback to the ruling BJP-Shiv Sena alliance, the Congress’ Ravindra Dhangekar — the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) candidate for the Kasba Peth Assembly segment — defeated BJP’s Hemant Rasane by a margin of over 11,000 votes.

The bypoll to the Kasba Peth Assembly constituency was necessitated owing to the death of sitting BJP MLA Mukta Tilak — a scion of Lokmanya Tilak’s family.

Widely regarded as a BJP stronghold, the bypoll verdict has triggered serious introspection within the BJP, with party functionaries and supporters engaging in heated discussion over the reasons for the defeat

While the Kasba Peth defeat does not numerically look extraordinary, it has lend itself to a narrative that Brahmins are no longer backing the BJP.

Some party supporters have argued that the bypoll has delivered a much-needed reality check to the party and if it does not get its act together, it faces serious threat of voter attrition. 

Focus on Hindutva, caste, identity, Aurangzeb etc. are immaterial if their immediate problems are not addressed, they argue.

Another section of supporters have also suggested that BJP needs to learn the right lessons from the poll and corporators and MLAs should not hope to win on Brand Modi and they should make themselves accessible to their constituents. 

Constituency Profile

Kasba Peth is an entirely urban constituency on the eastern bank of the Mula Mutha river, with a huge variation of demography within the constituency.

The lower central and the southern part (SP) of the constituency abuts the old city, which is heavily upper caste in composition. This part is central to Pune’s historic epistemological traditions and backs the Hindutva political thought.

The upper central and the northern part (NP) of the constituency adjoins Bund Garden, Koregaon Park and Sangamwadi areas. This part is a mix of some of the richest neighbourhoods of Pune (characterised by low voting) and slum areas comprising of poor migrants coming into the city.

The two parts are quite dissimilar in their composition and socioeconomic backgrounds. While SP was the “core city” over the years, the growth of the constituency has happened towards the NP.

Understanding the Constituency Evolution

Until 2004, while the city of Pune was still not experiencing a blistering growth, this constituency remained a BJP stronghold. 

Before the constituency underwent demographic transformation, it was largely upper caste-dominated and voted for the BJP. However, even at this point, the Congress had a clear 45 per cent vote share (including Congress and NCP votes in total).

Starting 2009, this ‘55-45’ equation began to change.

This would have been a direct result of the growth witnessed by Pune starting early 2000s when it began to emerge as a new hub for IT and pharma companies. The number of votes polled doubled from 2004 to the 2009 elections.

However, BJP was not gaining incrementally at the same rate – just about 25-30 per cent of the incremental vote came to the BJP.

By 2009, BJP’s natural base seems to have shrunk to 40 per cent from 55 per cent. This was also evident in the 2014 assembly election, where the Modi wave was in its infancy.

Given the Modi wave massively boosted BJP’s fortunes in two Lok Sabha elections, it has been wrongly inferred that the Kasba seat remained a BJP bastion in the way it was at the turn of the century.

The assembly election data 2009 onward does not bear this same conclusion. In fact, had the 2014 Assembly election been a bipolar contest, the BJP would have potentially lost the seat then itself, even in alliance with Shiv Sena.

The votes polled for the BJP between 2014 and 2023 have been on a decline

This may be due to several factors. But in general, the traditional SP voters have moved to new parts of the city since 2005 – Aundh, Baner, Kothrud. This may have led to some natural decline of the BJP voter base.

• As the data between 2004 and 2009 shows, BJP does not gain incremental new votes as fast as the total growth of votes. 

• The constituency is growing in the north and there is broadly a movement out of the south side. This is structurally anti-BJP.

• At no stage has the structural anti-BJP vote (Congress + NCP + MNS + VBA) come below 40 per cent, barring the massive Modi wave election of 2019.

• This is also borne out with slightly dated census data of 2011, which indicated that 25 per cent of the population in the constituency was Muslim and Scheduled Castes – groups that don’t vote naturally for the BJP.

2023 Bypoll Commentary: Some Myths 

In the aftermath of the BJP loss in the 2023 bypoll, several comments have been made as analysis of this election.

The first argument has been that Kasba Peth is a heavily upper caste seat and hence the BJP loss shows an upper caste dissonance. 

As per various estimates in the absence of new census data, the constituency is 30 per cent OBCs, 25 per cent Maratha, 15 per cent Brahmins and other upper casts, 15 per cent Muslim, 10 per cent Scheduled Castes and 5 per cent Others. 

OBCs and Brahmins who form the core vote base for the BJP in the state are about 45 per cent of the voter base – which seems to tie up with the natural 40 per cent core vote that the BJP has been pegged to without a Modi wave.

Even in 2023, the BJP vote share was 45 per cent, just 6 per cent down from the 2019 assembly election, which is in the ballpark of the favourable voter base count.

The second argument has been an outsized commentary on Mukta Tilak’s stature as a political leader. The bypoll was necessitated due to her death.

Mukta Tilak was a first-time MLA in 2019 and got the ticket only with Girish Bapat, the traditional incumbent, contesting the Pune Lok Sabha seat.

She had been the mayor of Pune and if the litany of Pune’s infrastructure woes is anything to go by, her tenure would have not been labelled very successful.

In this sense, while she enjoyed the benefits of belonging to the family of Bal Gangadhar Tilak, she did not carry any personal towering political stature. 

The third argument has been that there is a massive anti-incumbency wave against the BJP, especially in the Brahmin community.

The following points will help to bust this myth:

• The number of votes polled in Kasba in 2023 bypoll were the lowest since 2004. It is quite possible that many BJP voters did not turn up to vote.

• However, BJP voters sitting at home for bypolls is hardly a unique, seat-specific phenomenon. This happens state after state, in Lok Sabha as well as Vidhan Sabha. 

• The BJP did poll 45 per cent votes even now against the 53 per cent of the united opposition, so the result was about a 4 per cent swing, which is not a huge number in a two-way contest.

• This does not necessarily lead to any firm conclusion that there is a structural anti-incumbency based on representational math (i.e., the theory that BJP is ignoring brahmins). 

The pertinent questions that need to be asked instead are:

• Why did close to 20,000 voters not turn up? Was it a Kasba-specific phenomenon or something that BJP faces in any bypoll?

• Why is BJP not making inroads in the constituency in the incremental voter base?

Constituency – Key Issues

Irrespective of the bypoll result, there are some key issues that need to be recognised.

One, how popular really was Girish Bapat?

This constituency has been represented by Girish Bapat for several years, now the Pune Lok Sabha MP. 

Bapat had clear anti-incumbency even in 2014, where he won narrowly only because the opposition vote got divided.

Bapat has been a terrible performer as the Pune MP, a situation made complicated by his own ill health in the later part of the tenure.

Two, Mukta Tilak was not the most visible Pune leader during the torrid time seen by Pune during Covid-19. Between a state machinery which did not have time for Pune and the apathy of most Pune leaders barring a few (exceptions from BJP were Muralidhar Mohol and Siddharth Shirole), the dissonance about BJP leaders has been building up right since 2019.

Third, this constituency is also the heart of the city and there aren’t too many positives in terms of infrastructure or civic planning which this part witnesses.

Fourth, and above that, this area has been severely impacted by the Pune Metro construction, with two of the three lines causing traffic snarls for residents of this constituency.

This project is delayed inordinately – true of all Pune infrastructure work – so in general, the quality of life in this area has been very poor since 2016 or so, when the Metro planning and then construction started.

Pune’s Issues

There is no doubt that Pune has suffered heavily under successive governments when it comes to infrastructure. 

• The Sena-BJP government of the 1990s was totally Mumbai focused with Shiv Sena being in charge.

• Since then, the Congress–NCP governments did not work on any structural issues for Pune at all.

• A small respite was when during Suresh Kalmadi’s tenure as MP, the city got a facelift for the Commonwealth Youth Games.

• But that was focused mainly on the city roads and that gain lasted only a few years.

• Between Mumbai and Nagpur (presence of Nitin Gadkari and Devendra Fadnavis), Pune has been left unattended during the BJP time.

• CM Fadnavis did kickstart several new projects, but with almost everything in the state being challenged politically and/or judicially, the Pune projects got the short end of the firefighting required to move things along.

• The MVA government was a disaster for the city, with no strong focus. DCM Ajit Pawar was not able to get the required funding or the government attention even when he tried.

The new Shinde–Fadnavis government has again tried to bring back some momentum, but the execution of enabling actions (e.g. dismantling University flyover, Chandni Chowk flyover, rearranging University traffic) has been outright incompetent on part of the local leaders and the municipal corporation. 

Every big infrastructure project is delayed

• The Pune Metro launch dates have been repeatedly pushed back, despite the PM himself inaugurating one stretch.

• The Pune Ring Road is yet to be resurrected, a project pending since early 2000s.

• The Pune International Airport, first planned in mid 2000s has not seen any progress. Even the new terminal of the current airport has been delayed.

• New railways lines to Nashik and Mumbai had been totally forgotten, though it appears that they have recently been “promoted” to the backburner.

• The city which used to be a set of two reasonably well-run municipal corporations has long become unmanageably filthy in the recent years. 

• Areas where the city is actually expanding mostly fall under the Vadgaon Sheri, Chinchwad and Khadakwasla assembly constituencies – these areas hardly get any local political attention.

• There is no single important leader in Pune BJP, which has also painted a stark contrast relative to PM Modi and DCM Fadnavis.

All in all, Pune has had the feeling of the neglected ‘middle child’ between Mumbai and Nagpur, and this feeling has been only deeply entrenched in the last decade.

Activism Issues

Compounding these issues has been a home-grown Pune issue of citizen activism. 

This started on a positive, contributory note in many localities years ago. But now, a stronger-than-usual sense of “Not In My Backyard” – NIMBYism has crept in the activism initiatives.

• Pune’s High Capacity Mass Transit Road (HCMTR) has been inordinately delayed due to the nature of its alignment and protests over construction in areas it touches.

• The Pune Metro itself was delayed due to litigation started by some Pune elites on potential damage to riverbanks. 

• A key road that would link two congested parts of the city in the western side, but will need either tunnelling under a city hill or a raised construction on the hill has been opposed for years by the activists.

• In many cases, the activists also denounce the problem (traffic) as well as the solutions (metro, new roads).

In general, the share of voice of activists far outdoes the share of voice for genuine concerns. Worse, their agendas tend to get highlighted significantly more in the media/social media conversations relative to what would make true difference to the city as a whole.

A related problem is the concentration of citizen voices too. Even those voices, which are not into agenda-based activism, well-meaning and generally pro-BJP, are also concentrated in small pockets of the city (media as well as social media), which means that concerns of the newer parts of Pune are unusually under-represented in any discourse.

2019 Baggage – Chandrakant Dada Patil

On top of all these issues, there is also a big legacy baggage that the BJP is carrying. This is in the form of Chandrakant Data Patil being gifted the Kothrud assembly seat.

In 2019, when Dada perhaps saw an impending loss in Kolhapur, he decided to contest from Kothrud.

This seat is heavily Brahmin-dominated – in some ways the ‘new Kasba’, plus also includes newer parts of city like Baner, which traditionally have people settled from pro-BJP states (Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan).

This move by Dada was perceived extremely negatively in Pune and it spoiled party’s positioning in a big way.

It solidified the view that the party was on a weak wicket. The move was also seen as Dada usurping the safest seat in the city, perhaps even the state!

His own tenure as MLA has not just been lacklustre, but he has also made heavily damaging statements courting the Shiv Sena during the MVA government, while the BJP supporters were being randomly persecuted by the state government. 

This baggage cost the party dear in 2019 and ever since has been a cause of great dissatisfaction in the city. 

As we head towards 2024, a year when Pune will vote to elect both a new MP and new MLAs, the Maharashtra BJP would do well to learn the right lessons from the Kasba Peth loss.