Revdi season in Maharashtra and going gaga over RaGa

The BJP will make much of its recent election victory in Haryana. Even though the conduct of a partisan Election Commission of India (ECI) has again been called into question, and not just by the Congress party that everyone expected will romp home.

In Maharashtra, for which the same ECI has not even announced election dates yet—presumably to give the BJP ample time to dangle all its election-time carrots—the polls are due in November, when the term of the current assembly comes to an end. The stakes are high in this state, where an illegitimate Mahayuti coalition government is doing its damnedest to cling to power. The BJP will obviously hope to carry the momentum of a dubious Haryana win into Maharashtra.

The current ad blitz by the state government, the Ladki Bahin Yojana cash transfer to women and other such welfarist doles, the inauguration of projects like the new metro lines in Mumbai and Pune are all part of the last-ditch attempt to appease the state’s voters.

On the other hand, this will be the first election in the state’s electoral history when Sharad Pawar and Uddhav Thackeray will be on the same side, campaigning together. There is strong sympathy for them, after the shenanigans of the BJP to dislodge the MVA government by engineering splits in the Shiv Sena and the NCP.

The Maratha– Dalit–minority votes, comprising roughly half the electorate in the state; nativist sentiment favouring the Marathi manoos; and the antipathy in Mumbai for Adani and his political benefactors are some of the other factors that will hobble the BJP in the state. So, the dynamics of Haryana and Maharashtra are very different.

The MVA (Maha Vikas Aghadi) coalition has strong OBC leaders like Jitendra Awhad, Vijay Waddetiwar and Amol Kolhe, and the Shiv Sena (UBT) and NCP (Sharad Pawar) are strong cadrebased parties. Also working in favour of the MVA is a Maratha–Muslim–Dalit– Kunbi consolidation, besides the seething resentment in rural Maharashtra over the worsening agriculture crisis, and a widespread feeling among the people that the state’s interests are being compromised by the so-called ‘double engine’ sarkar.

Some commentators believe that Haryana will hurt the morale and standing of the Congress in the MVA, where it might have expected to contest the largest number of seats. The party’s confidence was high, having bagged 13 Lok Sabha seats earlier this year.

Spirits in the MVA have risen, however, after Uddhav Thackeray went on record to say he would accept any chief ministerial candidate proposed by the Congress and Sharad Pawar; that the election in the state this time was not about him returning as chief minister but an existential battle to save the state and defeat the BJP and its allies.

Several leaders from the ruling coalition are already making a beeline to join the MVA, and not all of them are NCP (Ajit Pawar) MLAs either. Even BJP leaders close to Devendra Fadnavis like Harshvardhan Patil, Abhijeet Patil and Ramesh Kadam recently joined Sharad Pawar’s NCP.

Harshvardhan Patil revealed that in the last Lok Sabha elections, he had (secretly) helped Supriya Sule defeat Ajit Pawar’s spouse Sunetra Pawar in Baramati. Ramraje Naik Nimbalkar and Dipak Chavan from the Ajit Pawar faction are returning to Sharad Pawar while Uddhav has inducted Deepesh Mhatre, a leader close to Eknath Shinde, back into SS (UBT).

With the ECI notification still awaited, the momentum seems to favour the MVA but it can ill-afford to be complacent till a probable victory is sealed.

Hand-outs and hyperactivity

The state government has been pledging confounding amounts of money to publicise dubious schemes.

The state budget had earlier allocated Rs 96,000 crore for new welfare schemes including Rs 46,000 crore for the Ladki Bahin cash transfer scheme. Of this amount, Rs 270 crore was to be spent on advertising the schemes over three months.

On 7 October, the government issued a short-term tender for a 90-crore five-day digital publicity splash before the poll is notified. Ironically, the very next day (8 October), the state contractors’ association observed a symbolic protest in all districts, demanding payment of outstanding dues. The association claimed in a letter to the chief minister that Rs 40,000 crore was pending for over two years.

The finance department’s warning that the state government’s deficit threatens to exceed two lakh crore rupees in 2024–25 prompted people to wonder how the state planned to repay mega ‘foreign’ loans. Between 30 September and 8 October, the Mahayuti government has issued 1,087 government resolutions (GRs)!

These pertain to almost all departments and include policy decisions (such as approving the procurement of salt pan lands from the Union government for the Dharavi ‘redevelopment’ project and small hydro projects), fund disbursement and HR matters such as promotions, postings, transfers and upgradation of pay and perks as well as the announcement of new initiatives.

The flurry of dubious decisions ahead of the upcoming election sanction massive cost escalations and questionable land transfers. The cost of the Pune Ring Road project, which hasn’t even started yet, skyrocketed by a staggering Rs 20,375 crore—taking the total to Rs 42,711 crore. In just three years, this 68 km road has turned into a financial black hole. BJP MLA Captain Tamil Selvan was allotted a 6,320 sq. m. plot in the Wadala salt pan area for the Veer Savarkar Charitable Trust, allegedly for a pittance.

The deal, rubberstamped in less than a month, fast-tracked land-use change from residential to educational, ignoring all and any objections.

Gaga over RaGa’s visit to Kolhapur

Rahul Gandhi’s visit to Kolhapur created a stir of a different kind. While the unveiling of a statue of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj and attending a session to speak on the Constitution were par for the course, it was his visit to the kitchen of a Dalit family that grabbed attention.

A short video of his interaction with his hosts Anjana and Ajay Tukaram Sanade showed the LoP chatting with them about the discrimination they faced, learning how to cook a dish typically eaten in Dalit households and lunching with them. Ajay bluntly told Rahul that neither he nor his family had ever voted for the Congress in any election. Nor, by the way, had they voted for the BJP!

Once the video was posted, local media descended on the Sanades’ home, where they learnt that Rahul had tried his hand at cooking harbharyachi bhaji, a traditional dish made with greens and chickpeas and tuvar dal (pigeon peas) with brinjal. The video and the visit stole the thunder from PM Modi, who landed in Maharashtra at the same time (5 October) to launch schemes worth Rs 56,000 crore.

Rahul’s team seems to have caught on that in the age of Instagram, such videos go a long way connecting with the people. Kolhapur is a sugar belt in western Maharashtra, with 70 assembly constituencies falling in this region. In 2019, the Congress and the undivided NCP had bagged 39 seats as opposed to the BJP’s 20.

The undivided Shiv Sena had won five seats. Observers say the visit by the Congress leader makes the Mahayuti’s task of improving its tally a tad tougher. Analyst Deepak Kaitke says Gandhi’s visit to Kolhapur was significant because it was here that Shahuji Maharaj, a descendant of Shivaji, had instituted reservation for Dalits for the first time.

He believes the Maharashtra assembly election will be contested on two key points: the Constitution and reservation, which Rahul Gandhi wants to expand beyond the 50 per cent limit set by the Supreme Court.

And last but not least, Rahul took time out to meet Sharvani Mangwe, whom he met during the Bharat Jodo Yatra. Learning that she was an entrepreneur who made her own ice cream, he promised he’d visit. And he did, dropping by at the Rolling Stone Ice Cream Parlour for a taste. How sweet is that?