Five months after they first shared a dais in over two decades, the Thackeray cousins – Uddhav and Raj – made public their alliance for the upcoming Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) polls.
Elections will be held for 29 municipal corporations, of which BMC, the country’s richest civic body, is the largest pie that every major party in Maharashtra is eyeing.
Though neither Uddhav nor Raj spilled the details on the seat-sharing arrangement, Uddhav-led Shiv Sena is likely to contest in 145-150 seats and leave 65-70 seats for the Raj Thackeray-led Maharashtra Navanirman Sena.
“Mumbai’s mayor will be Marathi and will be ours,” Raj said addressing a joint news conference in Mumbai’s Worli on Wednesday.
Uddhav told the media seat sharing has been finalised for Mumbai, Nashik and the 27 other civic bodies in the state which will go to polls on 15 January.
“Those who can’t bear to see what is happening in BJP can also come with us,” Uddhav said.
But will the family reunion work given the BJP appears to be on a stronger wicket?
Uddhav’s call seemed more of an appeal as the party has lost most of its sitting and some former corporators to the BJP and the Eknath Shinde-led Sena.
On Tuesday, two of the party’s former corporators in Pune joined the BJP. In the last Pune civic polls, the undivided Shiv Sena had won 10 seats. Two of the corporators joined hands with Shinde soon after and the rest of them have over the last four three years moved to the BJP.
In Dahisar, near Mumbai, the only remaining corporator from Uddhav’s faction, Tejasvi Ghosalkar, moved to the BJP some days ago.
“The alliance (between Raj and Uddhav) will have little impact on the ground. They have lost most of their people to the BJP. When they were powerful, they did not come together. It is not going to make any difference now,” said a Mumbai BJP leader.
For Shinde, the former chief minister on whom the Shiv Sena name and symbol rests on the orders of Supreme Court, the BMC elections is an opportunity to expand his clout and throw a challenge to the BJP.
The BJP’s proposal to its Mahayuti allies, the Shiv Sena and the NCP, is 50 seats for Shinde and 27 seats, mostly in the minority dominated areas to the Ajit Pawar-led NCP.
The BJP, which had its best performance in the BMC polls in 2017 when it won 82 seats, is keen to contest in at least 150 seats.
Shinde, a deputy chief minister, now has refused to accept the 50 seats that it has offered to the ally. Sources said Shinde has insisted on 80-90 seats, including the wards that the undivided Sena had won in 2017, and claimed Sena was the main political force in Mumbai, not the BJP.
Over the last several months, like the BJP, Shinde too has wooed the Uddhav-loyalist corporators to switch sides and they have.
Shinde is feeling the heat of having to accommodate those who switched to his camp.
The third Mahayuti ally, NCP leader Ajit Pawar has called a meeting with the party MLAs at Devgiri Bungalow, his official residence on Wednesday evening. Sources said Ajit Pawar might join forces with his uncle Sharad Pawar in Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad.
For now the Thackeray brothers appear to have hitched themselves to the original Marathi Manoos pitch.
“I want to tell the Marathi manoos, if you get divided then the Marathi manoos will lose authority over Mumbai. We need to remain united at any cost and condition,” Uddhav said in Wednesday’s briefing.
The Marathi-speaking voters account for about 26 per cent of the total vote share.
The Thackeray cousins have based their calculations on the MNS getting more votes than the winning margin of the BJP in 39 out of the 227 wards.
All this while the Congress, which had helped prop the Uddhav Thackeray government in 2019 has been scouting for allies elsewhere and has picked up the Prakash Ambedkar-led Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi.
“With Uddhav Thackeray joining forces with MNS we cannot be in the same alliance. The violent attacks that MNS workers have carried out on Muslims and north Indian residents in Mumbai and elsewhere cannot be ignored,” said a Mumbai Congress leader.
Though Ambedkar has talked about a 50:50 seat-sharing formula with the Congress, a source in Mumbai said, they have offered 40-50 of the 227 seats to the VBA, while the Sharad Pawar-led NCP has demanded 53 seats.
“In Lok Sabha polls and even in the Assembly elections held last year, Muslims had voted for Uddhav Thackeray. Now that they have allied with the MNS, we expect the Muslim votes to come to us,” said a Congress source. “The NCP (SP) does not have much presence in Mumbai. We are confident of performing well in Mumbai with the VBA.”
The grand old party has its own difficulties to deal with. For the 227 wards in the BMC, the party has received only 670 applications for prospective candidates.
In around 29 wards, the Congress is yet to receive a single application. This includes three wards in south Mumbai’s Worli and another ward in Malabar Hill.