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Business News/ Politics / Policy/  BJP, Shiv Sena agree to contest municipal elections together in Maharashtra
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BJP, Shiv Sena agree to contest municipal elections together in Maharashtra

Upcoming local body polls and the by-election to the Bandra East assembly seat have brought the two parties closer to keep Congress and NCP at bay

Raosaheb Danve, president of the Maharshtra state unit of the Bharatiya Janata Party. Photo: Hindustan TimesPremium
Raosaheb Danve, president of the Maharshtra state unit of the Bharatiya Janata Party. Photo: Hindustan Times

Mumbai: The sparring partners of Maharashtra’s ruling alliance have agreed to jointly contest the upcoming civic body polls in Aurangabad and Navi Mumbai scheduled for 22 April.

Of the 113 seats in the Aurangabad Municipal Corporation (AMC), the Shiv Sena will contest 64 seats and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) 49. Of the 111 seats in Navi Mumbai, the Shiv Sena will contest 68 and the BJP 43.

The parties made the announcement at a joint press meet by state BJP president Raosaheb Danve and Shiv Sena MP Chandrakant Khaire in Aurangabad on Monday evening. The relationship between the two saffron parties had turned sour when they ended their 25-year-old alliance over seat sharing ahead of the assembly election in October. There has been no end to the war of words since then.

The Sena, which won 63 seats in the assembly polls, has been functioning as a virtual opposition to the BJP, which won 122 seats, even though both are partners in the state as well as at the centre. The Sena, which is opposed to the Land Acquisition Rehabilitation and Resettlement (Amendment) Bill, which has snowballed into a prestige issue for the Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government, had abstained from voting on the bill in the Lok Sabha.

The BJP has often ignored the Sena’s barbs but has never missed a chance to show who has the upper hand. After the state elections, the BJP took outside support from the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) to form the government and kept the Sena on tenterhooks.

Finally, the Sena was forced to join the government without the BJP accepting any of its demands, such as getting the home portfolio and equal cabinet berths. The BJP kept all the key portfolios, such as revenue, finance, home, urban development and irrigation.

But the upcoming local body polls and the by-election to the Bandra East assembly seat on 11 April have brought the two parties closer in an attempt to keep the Congress and the NCP from staging a comeback.

“Last year, the BJP and the Sena did well in Lok Sabha and the assembly elections because there was huge anger among people against the 15-year Congress-NCP misrule in the state and 10 years of United Progressive Alliance government at the centre," said Prakash Akolkar, political editor of Marathi daily Sakal. “But now, the Modi government has been in power for almost 11 months and BJP-Sena have been in power in the state for the last six months. Though there is no visible resentment against both parties, there is no particular wave against or in favour of any particular party or parties in the state. So it makes sense for both the parties to adopt a flexible position," Akolkar added.

The Bandra East by-election and the AMC election have more significance for the Sena. The by-election was necessitated by the death of one of the Sena’s sitting legislators, Prakash alias Bala Sawant, and has become a prestige issue for two reasons—Matoshree, the residence of the Thackerays, is in the constituency and the party’s bête noire and former chief minister Narayan Rane is the Congress candidate.

The AMC is also important for the Sena because it was the party’s first electoral win outside the Mumbai-Thane belt and it has been controlling the civic body since the late 1980s. However, this has also created a huge anti-incumbency sentiment against the party.

In Navi Mumbai, both the Sena and the BJP see a chance to end the stranglehold of local strongman, and ex-minister in the Congress-NCP government, Ganesh Naik, who was defeated in the assembly elections by the BJP nominee. Ever since the Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation was formed in the early 1990s, it has been controlled by Naik, who belongs to the NCP.

“The Congress and NCP have vacated huge political space and both parties (BJP and Shiv Sena) are trying to occupy that space; so, the love-hate relationship between both parties will continue till one party or the other feels confident enough to dump the other and go on its own," said Suhas Palshikar, professor of political science at the Savitribai Phule Pune University.

Perhaps we will get a clear picture as we get closer to the elections to municipal corporations of major cities such as Mumbai, Pune, Nagpur, Thane, Nashik and a large chunk of the zilla parishad elections, he added. The elections to these municipal corporations, and to 22 zilla parishads out of a total of 36, are scheduled for early 2017.

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Published: 07 Apr 2015, 12:10 AM IST
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