Long kiss goodbye

Long kiss goodbye
Team Mumbai Mirror

Both parties maintain the other had long decided to end the alliance; the talks, they insist, were a charade.

A disclaimer: making predictions in politics is a risky business. However, as things stood on Wednesday night - and as they have stood much the same in the past three weeks - the Sena-BJP alliance looked as good as over.

And while the wily politicians may still surprise us on Thursday with a publicity handout picture of Uddhav and Amit Shah holding up each other’s hands and declaring the continuation of the partnership, all indications at the time of going to press were that the two parties had made up their minds to contest the assembly elections solo.

In fact, voices from both camps suggested that the minds were made up at least a couple of months back and the talks over seat-sharing - painful and repetitive - were just a contest to see who would blink first. Well, nobody did and now we are just two days away from the last day of filing nomination papers.

It now turns out that as far back as June this year, the Bharatiya Janata Party had instituted not one but 22 surveys to determine how the party would fare if it severed its alliance with Sena. The sum forecast of the 22 surveys was that the party, on its own, stood to win 122 seats - a gain of 61 on its 2009 tally. Fresh from winning a landslide in the Lok Sabha elections, this piece of good news convinced the state leadership that it was time to end the party’s 25-year-old partnership with the Sena.

This information was leaked by Sena leaders on Wednesday as both partners tried to place the blame of the imminent break-up at each other’s door. But what the Sena leaders did not reveal was that the news of the BJP surveys had reached them early in July and Uddhav Thackeray’s declaration of ‘Mission 150’ – a pledge to contest and win 150 seats - was a reaction to it.

Observers on both sides now say there were enough signs over the last few months of the two parties having had enough of each other:

» The appearance of a massive hoarding welcoming Amit Shah to Mumbai at Kalanagar junction, a short walk away from Matoshree, the Thackeray mansion.

» Amit Shah’s claim at a rally that the next government in Maharashtra will be led by the BJP.

» Shiv Sena posters asking Amit Shah to get wiser (Shah-na ho!)

» BJP leader Madhu Chavan’s analogy of ‘bonsai’ for BJP’s curtailed growth in Maharashtra.

» Uddhav Thackeray’s open expression of desire to be the CM.

» BJP posters staking claim to the legacy of Chhatrapati Shivaji, the Maratha king from whom the Sena derives its identity.

But if both were so set on a separation, why has it taken them so long to say it?

Both analysts and leaders believe neither of the alliance partners wanted to be held responsible for the break-up. And that is the reason why even on Wednesday when everything seemed lost, no leader from either side was willing to pronounce the end of the union. A bit like a girl and a boy calling it quits. Both want to move on, but both also want to be seen as the wronged one.

But in this split, there really are no villains. It’s just that the alliance has run its course.

The Shiv Sena is now without its supreme leader Bal Thackeray, and the BJP no longer has Pramod Mahajan and L K Advani in charge. Amit Shah is not invested in this marriage as Mahajan and Advani were, and Uddhav too sees the importance of reinventing the party. He has termed this election a fight for survival, thus galvanising the cadre.

There was a time when all it took was a meeting between Mahajan and Bal Thackeray to seal the seat-sharing pact. And if there still was a problem, Advani would fly down and things were settled. The only other leader who understood the value of the alliance and respected its legacy was Gopinath Munde. His tragic death in a road mishap in June robbed the alliance of its last link with the past.

The new BJP does not understand and appreciate the protocols of the alliance. So Uddhav Thackeray, used to deal with the senior-most leaders of BJP, was left miffed when he was asked to talk to Om Prakash Mathur, a mere interlocutor. He then got back by by sending his son Aditya to a meeting with the state BJP leadership.

And then there is Amit Shah. The man who delivered UP to the BJP in the general election does not seem to have much time for niceties. A tough task master, he is impatient to establish his party throughout the country and Maharashtra is a litmus test for him.

While initially his idea of going solo in Maharashtra did not get much support, it all changed after Munde’s death. And the idea became a war-cry once Nitin Gadkari, party’s senior-most leader in the state, backed it.

Gadkari’s logic was simple - if not now then when? He is convinced that this is the best time for the BJP to step out of Sena’s shadow. The unprecedented goodwill the party is enjoying after Modi became the prime minister contrasts sharply with the Congress-NCP’s loss of face following a series of scams.

Sena sources allege that the BJP held back-door talks with parties like the Raj Thackerayled Maharashtra Navnirman Sena and Sharad Pawar Nationalist Congress Party. They also allege that the party held parlays with smaller partners of the Sena-BJP alliance too. “All this indicates that they had made up their minds to go it alone. All the façade of talks was an attempt to place the blame of the separation at our door,” said a Sena leader.

BJP leaders charge Sena of launching ‘Mission 150’ with the sole aim of breaking the alliance. “They left no room for any negotiation. The very fact they never climbed down from the 150 mark indicates that they wanted the partnership to end,” said a senior BJP leader.

BJP sources in Delhi on Wednesday admitted that the seat-sharing negotiations have dragged on for too long for the alliance to work on ground-level anymore. "It is better the alliance ends now. We have already asked party candidates to begin work in assembly constituencies. There are at least 200 candidates out there in the field already,” said a BJP member of Parliament.