Maharashtra: Public disagreements as political ploys?

With Assembly elections in sight, there’s nothing accidental about the sudden spike in hate speech by sundry BJP leaders. Just as there’s nothing surprising about who the hate speech is directed at. Muslims comprise 14 per cent of Maharashtra’s population, and the hardcore Hindutva-walas believe nothing can be lost by alienating them — even further.

This would explain police inaction against Narayan Rane’s son and BJP MLA Nitesh Rane, whose inflammatory speeches include exhortations to boycott Muslim vendors and traders, oppose Muslims who make Mumbai their home, and be prepared to go on the warpath against the entire minority community.

As many as three different FIRs have been belatedly registered by different police stations, the latest one in Navi Mumbai. Rane openly threatened Muslims, “If anybody says anything against Ramgiri Maharaj, we will enter your mosque and hit you one by one.” This in defence of the Mahant who has 51 FIRS against him for derogatory remarks against the Prophet.

While the saffron party thrives on such vitriol, and a tardy police and mute home minister are par for the course, the BJP’s allies are not loving it — for a reason. BJP allies believe they lost at least 15 of the 48 Lok Sabha seats in the state because minority votes were cast in favour of the MVA or the INDIA bloc. Both the Shiv Sena (Shinde) and the NCP (Ajit Pawar) bore the brunt of this alienation and are keen to avoid making the same mistake twice. They are going all out to reassure Muslims of their support.

And so, both have been vocal in condemning Rane Jr’s hate speech. In turn, BJP’s Ashish Shelar has taken the lead in accusing its allies of ‘Muslim appeasement’. Ajit Pawar has declared in his speeches that his party did not support anti-Muslim statements being issued by the other leaders.

Ajit Pawar had incurred the displeasure of BJP leaders even before the Lok Sabha election when he spoke in favour of Maratha and Muslim reservation. The BJP and the RSS have been critical of him, openly stating that he brought very little to the table and is turning out to be a liability.

These statements are aimed at provoking him to pull out of the coalition on his own, thus making room for more BJP and Shiv Sena (Shinde) candidates to be fielded in the Assembly election. Ajit Pawar hasn’t (yet) risen to the bait.

In Nagpur, after a promo event around the state’s Majhi Ladki Bahin Yojana, chief minister Eknath Shinde and Ajit Pawar were led to the RSS headquarters for an unscheduled visit, with photographers in tow. While Shinde dutifully laid floral tributes at the statue of RSS founder K.B. Hedgewar, Ajit Pawar conspicuously kept his distance.

Even more tellingly, Yamini Jadhav, the Byculla MLA from Shiv Sena (Shinde) distributed burqas to a thousand Muslim women at a public function earlier this month. Jadhav lost the Lok Sabha election to Arvind Sawant of the Shiv Sena (UBT) by a margin of 50,000 votes. For the Assembly election, she is clearly hedging her bets. She dismissed the BJP’s criticism of ‘Muslim appeasement’ by saying she was only taking care of her constituency.

Most observers seem to agree that the public airing of differences is strategic — the deliberate divide is a well-calibrated political ploy to ensure electoral benefits for all three parties in the coalition. And while the Mahayuti’s ‘blow-hot-blow-cold’ approach may end up blowing up in its face, the bigger worry is of communal violence being engineered to polarise voters in the run-up to the election.

Once bitten, twice shy

The Election Commission of India will have to issue the poll notification before the Maharashtra Assembly’s term ends in November. But meanwhile, the ‘double engine’ sarkar is making the most of the extra time they have been blessed with following the ECI’s decision against holding elections in Maharashtra on 5 October (along with Haryana). The two states went to the polls together in the last three electoral cycles (2009, 2014 and 2019).

Last year’s ban on the export of onions had cost the BJP heavily in the Lok Sabha polls. Onion prices crashed in Maharashtra, a major onion-growing state, and a bad situation was made worse by the Union government granting Gujarat a special exemption to export onions to the Gulf.

An announcement made last week was clearly meant to make up for last year’s lapse: minimum support price (MSP) for soyabean, a reduction in the export duty on onions (from 40 to 20 per cent) and an increase in the import duty on refined oil (from 13.7 per cent to 35.75 per cent).

An elated chief minister was effusive in his thanks to the Union government and the PM. “Rural distress,” Shinde said, “had cost the ruling coalition, which won just 17 seats in the Lok Sabha as against 31 by the INDIA bloc. The decisions are expected to turn the tide.” Not only would traders who had earlier imported oil now have to depend on domestic supplies, farmers would also be happy.

Not quite. Narendra Savliram, secretary of the wholesale onion mandi at Lasalgaon, said small farmers would not derive any benefit — it’s the exporters, wholesalers and stockists who would. However, he added, the decision, if not reversed, might help growers of the kharif crop later this year.

Whose scheme is it anyway?

Ruling coalition leaders are falling over each other to take credit for the Ladki Bahin scheme. While Rs 1,500 per month is being transferred to women’s bank accounts, the state government has earmarked Rs 200 crore to publicise the scheme and an additional Rs 70 crore to hold rallies.

Since the election has not yet been notified, there is no bar on using public money for electoral publicity. Each ally is claiming credit separately, giving the impression that their respective leaders are paying the money out of their own pockets. Photographs of the other leaders have been carefully omitted from each party’s posters and banners.

Acrimony has arisen and Ajit Pawar has been accused of violating protocol at a cabinet meeting. Posters at his rallies bore neither the CM’s name nor mugshot. The other two parties are equally guilty. Deputy chief minister Devendra Fadnavis is the hero of his own posters, shown handing out the moolah.

Shinde’s political compulsions may not allow him to be as brazen and so the strategy is sneakier — at his rallies, posters featuring Fadnavis and Ajit Pawar are generally covered by his supporters! Shinde is also going door to door, assuring beneficiaries that he would double the monthly amount to Rs 3,000 — if voted back to power.

What takes the cake is the government’s decision to engage 50,000 young men and women on a monthly honorarium of Rs 10,000 each. Their job? To carry details of the government’s schemes to the people.

What the hype hides is the leaks, frauds and inefficiencies in the delivery of these schemes. Several reports have already surfaced of fake bank accounts created to receive the amounts. With the state government’s public debt snowballing, the scheme is unsustainable. The government is therefore already looking for exclusion clauses.

The Lok Pal survey

Away from the hustle, the Lok Pal survey reveals what voters are really concerned about: rural distress, price rise, failure of law and order, damage to Maharashtrian pride, unemployment and relocation of projects to Gujarat.

Other findings include high anti-incumbency against the BJP, Eknath Shinde’s popularity on the rise and Sharad Pawar’s NCP being seen as the real NCP. The survey predicts that the Opposition MVA is likely to win 141-154 seats while the NDA or Mahayuti will get 115-128, with 5-18 seats going to others.

While the MVA maintains its edge in Vidarbha, Marathwada, western Maharashtra and Mumbai, the NDA is found to have the advantage in Khandesh and Konkan.