Maharashtra is going to massive civic elections in 29 municipal corporations, including the prestigious Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), in which the stakes are high for the Thackeray brothers as well as the BJP-Shiv Sena after the ruling Mahayuti alliance got a landslide victory in the assembly elections last year.
Voting for these corporations will be held on Thursday and counting of votes will take place on Friday.
Voting will be held in 227 wards in the capital Mumbai, where around 1,700 candidates are in the fray. A total of 1,03,44,315 citizens are eligible to vote in the BMC elections. Of these, 55,16,707 are male voters, 48,26,509 are female voters and 1,099 are other voters.
The undivided Shiv Sena was a strong force in the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation. It won 84 seats, contesting the elections in alliance with the BJP, while the BJP won 82 seats. However, after the split of Shiv Sena in 2022, the situation has completely changed this time.
For the Thackeray brothers, Raj and Uddhav, these local body elections are a fight to regain lost prestige. This will also test whether the Thackeray surname still holds the same importance in the city and state as it once did.
Raj Thackeray’s MNS had won 19 seats in its first electoral contest in the 2009 BMC elections. However, since then, MNS’s performance in the state assembly elections has not been anything special.
Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena (UBT) was badly hit by the split ahead of the assembly elections and got only 20 seats in the 288-member House in last year’s assembly elections.
The coming together of the two cousins is being considered as the last bet of the Thackeray family’s legacy. The Thackeray family has projected this fight as a fight of ‘Marathi Manush’ against the alleged corporate nexus of the BJP-Sena alliance.
On the day the two cousins came together, Uddhav Thackeray said, “During the Assembly elections, the Bharatiya Janata Party carried out negative campaigning. With the slogan ‘Partition will break our bond’, an attempt was made to create division among the Marathi people. Now, if any mistake is made, its consequences will be grave. If partition happens again, we will be finished. Therefore, Marathi people should not break, should not be divided.”
Raj also expressed his views in more strong terms and told his voters that this was the last election of the Marathi people.
Raj said at an election rally, “This is the last election of the Marathi man. If this opportunity is missed today, it will be all over. Unite for Marathi and Maharashtra. Mumbai has been achieved by the sacrifices of so many people. What will we tell them? Booth level agents (BLAs) appointed at 6 am should be ready on the election day. Be alert, be careful, do not be careless. If someone comes to vote again, throw him out.”
After this, Uddhav made a direct attack on BJP and called on the voters to bury the ‘curse of partition’ and also tried to remind the legacy of Balasaheb Thackeray.
Uddhav Thackeray said, “All this Adaniism is going on. Is this not their ploy to make Mumbai Bombay again? Ask the public what Shiv Sena did in 25 years and how they ruined Mumbai in three years. Mumbai was achieved with bloodshed. It is our duty to fight with soldiers like you to stop this attack. Balasaheb Thackeray had taught us that if someone raises a hand on you, break his hand. Curse of partition today itself.” “Bury him.”
The Bharatiya Janata Party is contesting the BMC elections in alliance with the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena. The election is also being seen as a vote in support of Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis’s development plans, given the BJP’s massive electoral machinery in support of the coordinated election campaign and the grand alliance.
Many big projects have been started in Mumbai city under the Yuti scheme, of which the New Mumbai Metro Line and Coastal Road are the centerpieces of this development plan.
Fadnavis says that despite attempts by the opposition to change the narrative, the Yuti campaign has remained firmly focused on development.
“We not only held rallies but also did talk shows and road shows. In every city we continuously talked about development. Our opponents tried hard to divert the attention of the elections from the development agenda, especially in Mumbai, but we did not let them deviate,” he said.
He further said, “80-90 per cent of our election campaign was completely focused on development.”
The Chief Minister of Maharashtra is also not shying away from confronting the cousins of the Thackeray family on the issue of welfare of Marathi people.
Speaking about alleged efforts to polarize voters on linguistic lines, the Chief Minister said, “Marathi is my language. Marathi language should be developed.”
However, he questioned the opposition’s definition of “development of the Marathi people”, asking whether it meant driving Marathi-speaking people out of Mumbai or resorting to violence against workers.
“We have brought Marathi people back to Mumbai by creating jobs through infrastructure projects and building houses for people,” he said, adding that voters are aware of these efforts.
His colleague and deputy Eknath Shinde echoed Fadnavis, saying Marathi pride has never been in danger and expressed confidence that the Mahayuti alliance will come to power in the municipal elections.
He said, “In this election, some people gave emotional speeches that this is the last election to save the existence of ‘Marathi Manush’. I want to tell everyone that the existence of Marathi people in Mumbai was never in danger and will never be. Mahayuti will come to power in BMC and this is the saffron line drawn on the black stone.”
NCP and Congress are also in the fray in Mumbai, although their influence may not be visible that much and the real contest is said to be between Yuti and the Thackeray brothers. NCP (SP) has entered into an alliance with the Thackeray brothers.
Surprisingly, Ajit Pawar-led NCP has joined hands with his uncle Sharad Pawar-led NCP and is contesting the local body elections in Pune and Pimpri Chinchwad together. A favorable result will undoubtedly put pressure on the state alliance with the BJP-Shiv Sena.
Fadnavis has already accused Ajit Pawar of not adhering to his commitment of not resorting to “personal attacks”.
Fadnavis had said, “I am a man of my word. That is why, when it was decided that we will not contest elections in alliance with NCP in Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad, we had also said that it would be an amicable contest and we would not make any personal attacks on each other. We followed that commitment till the end, but Ajit Pawar did not. Why he did so, I do not know.”
Apart from Mumbai, the major municipal bodies going to polls on Thursday include Thane, Navi Mumbai, Ulhasnagar, Kalyan-Dombivli, Bhiwandi-Nizampur, Mira-Bhayander, Vasai-Virar, Panvel, Nashik, Malegaon, Ahilyanagar, Jalgaon, Dhule, Pune, Pimpri-Chinchwad, Solapur, Kolhapur, Ichalkaranji, Sangli-Miraj-Kupwad, Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar, Nanded-Waghala, Parbhani, Jalna, Latur, Amravati, Akola, Nagpur and Chandrapur are included.
In a state which is now full of political parties, these elections will have an impact on the future of the alliance.
Will the Thackeray family walk away from the Aghadi alliance like the Congress and will the BJP-Shiv Sena-Ajit Pawar alliance reunite after the municipal corporation election results are out? The answers to these questions will be found in the ballot box on Thursday.