Maharashtra Diary: Friends turn foes and lines get blurred

MNS chief Raj Thackeray supported Eknath Shinde when he revolted against Uddhav Thackeray, splintered the Shiv Sena and toppled the government. He also campaigned for Shinde’s son in Kalyan during the recent Lok Sabha election.

Politics, however, can turn friends into foes overnight. The provocation? Shinde refused to withdraw his party candidate from Mahim assembly constituency, where MNS has fielded Raj Thackeray’s son, Amit. Shinde’s grouse? Raj should have spoken to him first.

The Mahim seat is thus set to be a battle between all three Senas with UBT, SS (Shinde) and MNS (supported by the BJP) fielding candidates. The Mahim seat has always been an OG Sena stronghold, one of Balasaheb’s earliest bastions of support— hence the sharp edge to a contest that threatens to draw blood.

The MNS chief has, in fact, gone on the warpath against Shinde, declaring that the next chief minister of Maharashtra will be from the BJP. Criticising Shinde in an election rally, Raj said Bal Thackeray was the rightful claimant to the property and symbol of the Shiv Sena, just as Sharad Pawar is to the property and symbol of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP).

The fact that Raj Thackeray is supporting Devendra Fadnavis as Mahayuti leader has further irked Shinde, who has dug his heels in. The MNS is not part of the ruling coalition, which hasn’t stopped the BJP from supporting Amit Thackeray. It’s an open secret that the BJP proposes an MNS– Shiv Sena (Shinde) merger, with Raj as leader.

The BJP’s Narayan Rane has been campaigning for Shinde in Mahim, partly because one of his sons is contesting on an SS (Shinde) ticket. Political scientist Suhas Palshikar commented recently that there seem to be 288 different elections being held this time.

A free-for-all in virtually all the seats, with few aware of who is contesting for which party and why. In the midst of existential battles for the UBT and NCP alike, the BJP has opposed NCP (AP) fielding former minister Nawab Malik.

Malik was hounded by the BJP for alleged connections with underworld don Dawood Ibrahim and arrested by the ED in a money laundering case. It hasn’t been that vociferous against Malik’s daughter Sana, also fielded by the NCP (AP). In turn, Ajit Pawar said Devendra Fadnavis had shown him a file in 2015 in which the then home minister R.R. Patil had recommended an ‘open inquiry’ against him—thus accusing the BJP of attempting blackmail. The Congress and BJP are pitted against each other in as many as 74 of the 288 constituencies (almost 25 per cent).

In the 2019 elections, 42 of these seats were won by the BJP and 24 by the Congress. The Bahujan Vikas Aghadi had won two, the Prahar Janshakti Party two, the NCP one and independents three. The BJP contested in 163 seats and won 105 seats in the assembly in 2019.

This time the BJP has fielded 143 candidates under its own symbol in addition to fielding 12 of its own as SS (Shinde) candidates and five as NCP (AP) candidates, adding to the confusion. The withdrawal of Jarange Patil, who had emerged as a force advocating for Maratha reservation in Marathwada and Western Maharashtra, has further muddied the field.

Although Sharad Pawar has welcomed his withdrawal which should help the MVA by preventing a split in Maratha votes—estimated to be 23 per cent in the state—the political grapevine is abuzz with rumours that Patil withdrew at the BJP’s behest.

Patil has denied both rumours and links. The fact that the BJP is supporting two MNS candidates in Mumbai, Amit Thackeray in Mahim and Bala Nandgaonkar in Shivdi—where the Mahayuti does not have a candidate and UBT’s sitting MLA Ajay Chaudhary is in the fray—reveals its weak position.

While the NCP had fared well in western Maharashtra in 2019, the BJP had performed well in Marathwada (which has 46 assembly seats) and in Vidarbha, where the Congress is expected to do much better this time.

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It’s the economy, stupid

A report that documents the decline of Maharashtra during the last 10 years has embarrassed the state BJP, authored as it is by two members of the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council, Sanjeev Sanyal and Aakanksha Arora.

Anecdotal evidence of projects meant for Maharashtra having been shifted to Gujarat—Tata-Airbus, Foxconn, Apple among them—finds credibility in the report titled ‘Relative Economic Performance of Indian states: 1960–61 to 2023–24’.

Released in September, the report reveals a steady decline, for the very first time in the last decade, in Maharashtra’s GSDP growth rate and per capita income. The report states: ‘Maharashtra has maintained the highest share of India’s GDP for almost all of the [study] period. Gujarat’s share remained at broadly the same levels until 2000–01, before beginning to increase rapidly from 6.4 per cent in 2000–01 to 8.1 per cent in 2022–23.

Both Gujarat and Maharashtra have had per capita incomes exceeding the national average since the 1960s. Initially, Gujarat lagged behind Maharashtra, with a relative per capita income of 118.3 per cent compared to Maharashtra’s 133.7 per cent in 1960–61. This disparity persisted until 2010–11, when Gujarat surpassed Maharashtra.

By 2023–24, Gujarat’s per capita income has risen to 160.7 per cent of national average, as compared to 150 per cent for Maharashtra.’ Attempts to ‘downplay’ its findings unfold against radio silence in media about the report.

Meanwhile, Maharashtra Congress president Nana Patole has written to the PM, urging the Union government to ban the import of cotton and pleading for the state’s four million cotton farmers to be given fair MSP prices for their produce.

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Diary of a home minister

The book hasn’t yet been officially released but advance copies have reached journalists. At first glance, Anil Deshmukh’s Diary of a Home Minister appears to be a reiteration of what the MVA’s home minister had said in various interviews earlier.

The crux of the book is Devendra Fadnavis pressurising Deshmukh to sign an affidavit implicating Uddhav Thackeray, Aaditya Thackeray, Parth Pawar and Anil Parab. (He refused.) The affidavit had several items (and objectives).

One, to state that Uddhav Thackeray had asked Deshmukh to collect Rs 300 crore for the municipal corporation (BMC) elections. Two, to implicate Aaditya Thackeray in the death of Disha Salian, late actor Sushant Singh Rajput’s manager. Three, to charge Ajit Pawar’s son Parth Pawar of extorting money from paan masala units,

Four, to accuse minister Anil Parab of having invested in a resort. The book reveals that Fadnavis had later asked Deshmukh to drop the reference to Ajit Pawar’s son. The first chapter titled, ‘A for Ambani’, deals with the case of an explosives-laden SUV found parked outside Mukesh Ambani’s home Antilia in February 2021.

Deshmukh claims that he had taken steps against the then Mumbai police commissioner Parambir Singh and encounter specialist Sachin Waze. He was, however, implicated in the case and arrested by central agencies. Deshmukh, who spent 14 months in jail, is currently out on bail.

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ECI’s delayed action

After refusing to remove DGP Rashmi Shukla for weeks, the ECI has replaced her with Sanjay Kumar Verma. Shukla, the opposition claimed, had a role in the phone-tapping scandal and was closely linked with the BJP. While the ECI ordered the Jharkhand DGP to be kept away from election-related work, it delayed taking similar action against Shukla.