Prime Minister Narendra Modi is on track to double the number of rallies he addressed in Maharashtra from the 2019 election campaign.
In 2019, Modi spoke at a total of nine rallies in the state. This time, the May 7 rally in Beed was already his 13th and a few more are being scheduled till May 20, the date of the fifth and final phase of voting in Maharashtra. The national election is being held in seven phases.
There is one obvious reason for Modi stepping up his wooing of voters in Maharashtra. While political observers are identifying the 2024 parliamentary election in India as one without a wave – unlike the “Modi waves” of 2014 and 2019 – a supposed “sympathy wave” in favor of the opposition has become a talking point in Maharashtra.
Maharashtra is important. The state has 48 seats in the 543-seat Lok Sabha, the lower house of the Indian Parliament. Besides, the state capital, Mumbai, is India’s commercial capital.
In the 2014 and 2019 parliamentary elections, Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) swept Maharashtra, bagging 42 seats in 2014 and 41 in 2019. But political equations have changed significantly since the October 2019 Maharashtra state elections.
After winning that election, the Hindu nationalist Shiv Sena (SS), the BJP’s long-time and most natural ally, demanded the chief ministerial post. Founded by Bal Keshav Thackeray, a firebrand and controversial leader, in 1966, the SS has been headed by his son, Uddhav, since the elder Thackeray died in 2012.
After the BJP rejected Uddhav’s demand for the chief minister’s post, he did the unthinkable – he split from the NDA and joined hands with ideological rivals, the Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP). Uddhav Thackeray became the chief minister of a Sena-Congress-NCP government, named as the Maha Vikas Aghadi or MVA government.
Shiv Sena is Maharashtra’s regional party and many people in Maharashtra equate it with Marathi identity. It rose in the 1960s and ‘70s with its aggressive politics on ethnic lines but gradually transformed into a Hindutva party.
In 2019, Thackeray, finding friends among former foes, underplayed the SS’ Hindutva plank and focused on “development.” He did subtly try to invoke Marathi ethnic pride, but without indulging in the kind of exclusionary and violent politics that his father was known for.
“Soft-spoken Uddhav had rather surprisingly fitted into a secular alliance involving Congress and NCP and even earned people’s confidence due to his effective handling of the situation during the COVID-19 pandemic,” a Maharashtra-based journalist with one of India’s major dailies who wished to remain unnamed told The Diplomat.
The BJP took its revenge. First, in June 2022, there was a split in the SS, with the majority of its legislators in the state assembly and the parliament rebelling under the leadership of Eknath Shinde to join hands with the BJP. Eventually, with the BJP’s support, Shinde replaced Thackeray as the chief minister. The BJP’s Devendra Fadnavis, chief minister during the NDA’s 2014-2019 run, became the deputy chief minister despite having the support of more legislators than Shinde.
Next came a split in the NCP in August 2023, with the majority of the party’s elected representatives siding with rebel party leader Ajit Pawar, the nephew of NCP chief Sharad Pawar. Ajit Pawar then joined the Shinde government, bagging the post of deputy chief minister.
What is more, the Election Commission of India (ECI) declared the rebel factions led by Shinde and Ajit Pawar to be the official parties and awarded them the party name, flag, and symbol.
The parties led by Uddhav and Sharad Pawar got new names — Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) (SS-UBT) and NCP-Sharad Chandra Pawar NCP-SCP, respectively. Both are now fighting the elections with new names, flags, and symbols.
The BJP also has the support of the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) that Uddhav Thackeray’s cousin, Raj, had formed in 2006 after walking out of the SS over a leadership dispute. Influential state Congress leaders, including Ashok Chavan, a former chief minister, and Milind Deora, a former federal minister, have joined the BJP and Shinde-led SS, respectively.
On paper, the BJP-led alliance has everything — the majority of lawmakers as well as the flags and symbols of three major parties. But have they the same public support?
Political observers who spoke to The Diplomat are skeptical of the BJP-led alliance’s prospects. Even ruling coalition leaders have acknowledged that the party splits have become an emotive issue.
The BJP has always denied having engineered the split in the parties, arguing that the leaders failed to keep their flocks together with their inept running of the party.
However, opposition parties have always blamed the BJP.
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi alleged that the BJP used the money received through the controversial, now-scrapped Electoral Bond scheme to split the SS and NCP.
At the end of April, Chhagan Bhujbal, a senior leader of the Ajit Pawar-led NCP, told the media that he had noticed a “sympathy wave” in favor of SS-UBT and NCP-SCP. “The way Uddhav Thackeray’s Shiv Sena split and a faction of the NCP switched sides… This is showing in their rallies,” he said.
He added that he believed Modi’s appeal would finally help the ruling alliance sail through.
On May 8, Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar appealed to voters to “not fall into the emotional appeals from the opposite side.” Instead, they should consider those “who will work for them, can bring funds from the center for development, and can solve the problem of the water crisis in the region.”
Of the 48 seats, 15 will see a direct contest between warring factions. The NCP faces the NCP-SCP in two seats but Shinde’s stakes are bigger. The SS faces the SS-UBT in 13 seats in what is being seen as the decisive battle for the people’s mandate over the SS’ “true inheritance.”
Instead of cautioning voters over emotive appeals, Shinde has gone on the offensive. He has highlighted how Uddhav had betrayed his father and party founder Bal Thackeray’s ideology by shunning Hindutva and joining hands with secular forces. Shinde holds himself to be the real ideological torchbearer of the party founder.
Modi has claimed that Maharashtra’s sympathy lies with the BJP because the Uddhav-led Sena was the original betrayer; they contested as the BJP’s ally but sided with the opposition. While some people may, indeed, agree with Modi, there also are many who do not.
“Many people consider Uddhav to be the rightful inheritor of the party. I have even heard people saying Shinde ‘stole’ SS from Thackeray,” said another Maharashtra-based journalist.
Another factor that shows the BJP in a negative light is its induction of leaders facing anti-corruption probes by federal agencies into the party.
This has prompted the opposition to accuse the BJP of engaging in “washing machine politics” where corruption investigations against opposition leaders are stopped after they join the BJP. They cite the cases of Ajit Pawar and Ashok Chavan, who were facing multiple probes before they joined the BJP. The BJP insists the political moves do not impact probes, but media reports have shown how nearly all of them get a reprieve.
While the opposition alliance could benefit electorally from public sympathy, it suffers from organizational weaknesses and hopes that anti-incumbency sentiment against the Shinde government will kick in.
Shinde and Ajit Pawar, on the other hand, have the advantage of being in power and sharing the BJP’s machinery.
Amid such perception battles, local issues like farmers’ woes, water scarcity, the incumbent MP’s performance, and Hindu caste equations are also gaining importance. Owing to these factors, equations may change from constituency to constituency. This adds to the uncertainty factor.
Whether Modi can create a pro-incumbency wave with his repeated visits to overshadow the local factors remains to be seen.