The split in the Shiv Sena and in the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) of the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) may have left a trail of confusion and dismay in its wake within the alliance in Maharashtra, but the party’s active of wooing of Maratha leaders in the form of the NCP’s Ajit Pawar has raised its own series of misgivings within the Maharashtra BJP.
For many years, the BJP had been working on its own social engineering in Maharashtra, based on OBC consolidation, with OBCs estimated at around 52% of the population. With the Maratha vote solidly with leaders such as NCP patriarch Sharad Pawar and the Congress party’s Vilasrao Deshmukh, this was the obvious route for the BJP to take at that time.
This consolidation was created as a counterpoint to Maratha dominance, and challenged in Marathwada, and some parts of western Maharashtra and eastern Vidarbha. “The BJP had in the 1980s itself, under Vasant Rao Bhagwat, the then general secretary (organisation), decided to work on what was called the ‘MaDhaV’ combination, that is, Malis, Dhangars and Vanjaris,” a senior leader in the Maharashtra BJP said.
At that time, leaders like Anna Dange, who belonged to the Dhangar community, and Gopinath Munde, who belonged to the Vanjari community, were promoted by the party. “In fact, it was under Gopinath Munde that the Vanjari community also got the right for reservation in promotions and not in appointments in the State. The Vanjari community falls under the Vimukta Jati Nomadic Tribes (VNJT) category within the OBCs, and get reservations in promotions,” a source said.
“The BJP was earlier pitching Dhangar leader Gopichand Padalkar as a counter to the Maratha dominated politics of the Pawar family, especially in Baramati. He [Padalkar] has taken a very aggressive stance against the Pawars and Maratha dominance,” the source said. With the recent meeting between the two Pawars — rebel nephew Ajit and his uncle Sharad Pawar — doubts are being raised over whether the junior Pawar will support an aggressive campaign in Baramati against his cousin, Supriya Sule, the local MP.
Among other OBC leaders in the BJP are Union Minister Bhagwat Karad, and Ramesh Karad, both of whom belong to the Vanjari community, and Pravin Datke of the Bari community, apart from Mr. Padalkar.
“The entry of Ajit Pawar and his faction of the NCP into the NDA (National Democratic Alliance) and in government with the BJP is a situation of disruption for what was a deliberate and considered social engineering of the Maharashtra BJP, and part of its growth since the 1980s in the State,” the source added. The faultlines between the Maratha and OBC communities were also picked at by the Maratha Kranti Morchas (a series of silent protests) for reservation in 2015, when the BJP’s Devendra Fadnavis was the Chief Minister. That movement was peaceful but the OBC-Maratha differences grew.
In many places, the alliance between the BJP and the NCP is being called an alliance by leaders but not by the workers. “We have been struggling against these very leaders for decades, and now we have to enter into an alliance,” a senior leader said. While many understand that the alliance between the BJP and the Ajit Pawar-led NCP may help in breaking the formidable arithmetic of the MVA, the chemistry of such an alliance is still moot. “We understand that 48 Lok Sabha seats of Maharashtra are in the fray, and unlike in 2019, there is an MVA to combat, but there are issues and grievances here,” another leader of the BJP said.
Maharashtra politics has seen the unsettling of old alliances since 2014 when the BJP-Shiv Sena ‘Mahayuthi’ alliance, one of the oldest of the NDA, broke for the first time. This was coupled with the Congress and NCP fighting separately after running three full-term governments together. A short reconciliation later, the BJP-Shiv Sena alliance broke again just after the 2019 Assembly polls. The electoral chessboard is now looking at a truncated MVA set against a BJP-led NDA with the truncated parts of Shiv Sena and NCP in tow, and the worry in the Maharashtra BJP lies more in the direction of the alliance’s chemistry than its arithmetic.
