Winners And Losers Of Maharashtra Civic Elections

As the result day of the municipal bodies’ elections in Maharashtra comes to a close, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has emerged as the biggest winner across the state. At the time of writing this piece, the saffron party had wrested Pune and Pimpri Chinchwad Municipal Corporation from the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), Nashik Municipal Corporation from Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) and Solapur Municipal Corporation from Indian National Congress, while with a late surge, it has almost closed the gap to finish close second to former ally Shiv Sena in the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation.

Let’s take a closer look at the winners and losers of today’s results.

WINNERS

1. The BJP and Devendra Fadanvis

With this result, the BJP has established its presence at the grassroots level, something it failed to do when it was in power in the assembly the last time. Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis’ stock will get a huge boost as the charismatic state leader spearheaded the campaign both in chalking up a strategy and campaigning on the ground. After talks with Shiv Sena had fallen through, Fadnavis campaigned relentlessly across the state, and the results are there for everyone to see. Fadnavis largely stuck to the development plank and, in spite of scepticism from the far-right inside his party, he proved that development is the most sustainable platform from which to fight elections.

Of special importance is the BJP’s win in drought-hit districts like Latur, where ‘Jal-Yukt Shivar’, his brainchild, has proven to be a game-changer. While dealing with Latur’s drought situation, the Chief Minister displayed out-of-the-box thinking and arranged the delivery of water using trains. The voters did not forget that.

2. Uddhav Thackeray

In the last few months, Uddhav’s rhetoric against his ally at the centre was seen as grandstanding ahead of the municipal elections. With the BJP’s late surge, it is easy to underestimate Shiv Sena’s performance. However, two things must be kept in mind while assessing Uddhav and Shiv Sena’s performance.

As the alliance was the ruling party in BMC, there were reasonably strong headwinds of anti-incumbency due to infrastructure-related problems in the city. Thanks to the last-minute acrimony with the BJP, Uddhav successfully managed to sweep those issues under the carpet and make this election about state pride. With its claim of being the ‘big brother’ of the alliance, the BJP could have easily exploited the anti-incumbency to go past Shiv Sena, but Uddhav’s manoeuvres did not allow that to happen. Even in Thane, where the Chief Minister was perhaps more aggressive in his attack on Shiv Sena than others, the latter managed to negotiate the attack to retain power. The net result is that Uddhav is the only leader who has taken on the BJP campaign machinery twice in less than two years and still managed to hold his own.

3. Rebels of Pimpri-Chinchwad

When a large section of leaders from the NCP broke ranks to join the BJP a few months before the elections, the NCP supremo Ajit Pawar had mocked the rebels saying the NCP benefited from the desertion as those leaders were of no use. With the BJP pulling decisively ahead of NCP in the municipal corporation at the time of writing, it seems the rebels got it right. This should worry the party boss Sharad Pawar greatly.

LOSERS

1. Indian National Congress

With its tally of 75 seats across 10 municipal corporations falling short of the BJP’s tally from Mumbai alone, the game is well and truly up for India’s Grand Old Party. Lack of a political message apart from ‘oppose Modi’, absence of a state-level leader to play the centrepiece of the state-wide campaign, and leaders who have lost touch with the grassroots, are some of the reasons that come to mind.

In the past, Congress always took pride in its presence in the cooperative movement, and at local bodies. That is no longer a valid claim as the party has been decimated across the state. Sanjay Nirupam’s offer to resign as Mumbai chief is cosmetic and may actually hide the real maladies afflicting India’s oldest party.

2. Maharashtra Navnirman Sena

The slide of MNS continues. They have now lost the only corporation where they had power (Nashik) and failed to make an impression anywhere else. Party boss Raj Thackeray is good for television ratings, but he has clearly failed to emulate his less flamboyant cousin Uddhav’s organisational skills. In spite of the oratory skills of their chief and more than a few good candidates across cities like Mumbai, Pune and Nashik, the MNS has failed to communicate their position on civic issues, and there is only so much one can win on the element of novelty.

3. Pankaja Munde

With the BJP losing eight out of 10 seats in their home town, the embattled BJP leader will have to admit that she is falling further behind in the competition at the state-leadership level. An injudicious choice of messaging on social media (that included a selfie near an empty dam as the state battled with drought), the young leader seems unwilling to grow out of her late father’s formidable shadow.

Over the next few days, the rhetoric between Shiv Sena and the BJP is likely to grow more strident. Both parties know they may need each other in important cities like Mumbai, PCMC and even in Pune and Nashik as the BJP may fall short on securing an absolute majority in those corporations by a margin of single digits. Fadanvis would do well to ignore Shiv Sena’s rhetoric and bring them to the discussion table to keep Congress/NCP or MNS from sneaking through the back door. So far Maharashtra’s Chief Minister has shown good temperament while dealing with his ally, and the chances of him sealing post-poll alliances look good. Interestingly, the BJP member of Parliament in Rajya Sabha, Subramanian Swamy, also tweeted his desire to work to bring the two parties together as “Hindutva Blood Brothers”. Make of that what you will.

To summarise, Congress and the NCP need to go back to the drawing board and start communicating their agenda to the people better. As the last few elections have shown, the “BJP as a dictator party” hysteria has failed to convert into an inflow of voters in their favour. So these parties need to start telling people what they stand for rather than what they stand against.

Shiv Sena too would do well to remind themselves that for all their success in Mumbai, they failed to make an impact anywhere else in the state, while the BJP successfully engaged with them in Mumbai and comfortably went past them in other parts of the state. Uddhav needs to decide whether his party’s role is that of a strong ally or a prickly competitor, and build a strategy around that decision.

As the BJP Information Technology cell chief Amit Malviya said in one of his tweets, the results in Mumbai can have a significant impact on the polls in East Uttar Pradesh, which goes to polls on 4 and 8 March in the last two phases. If this happens, it will prove to be an icing on the cake for Maharashtra’s Chief Minister.