The Mahasangram of Maharashtra

Mumbai: There seems no end to the seat sharing saga in Maharashtra. While the talks between the major political alliance in Maharashtra—BJP and Shiv Sena – yielded no result as of Monday, the deadlock also continues on the future of the ruling alliance – Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP).

Shiv Sena president Uddhav Thackeray gave a final offer to BJP in a bid to end the stalemate. According to the new proposal, Shiv Sena will contest 151 seats, four fewer than what it had demanded earlier for the 288-member Maharashtra assembly. It offered BJP 119 seats, the same as in the 2009 state elections and 18 seats to smaller allies. Shiv Sena had contested 169 seats in 2009. BJP wanted to contest an equal number of seats as Sena after leaving 18 seats to smaller parties which would bring the number of Shiv Sena and BJP contestants to 135 each.

On Sunday BJP offered to contest 130, but Thackeray ruled out further negotiations, saying: “Take it or leave it”. The leader of the opposition in the Maharashtra assembly and senior BJP leader Eknath Khadse said in Delhi, “We are not happy with Sena’s proposal and if Sena wants to keep alliance intact, it should not send proposals through television but come forward for direct negotiations.”

Meanwhile, talks between the ruling Congress and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), too, were deadlocked. State NCP president Sunil Tatkare said, “After we rejected Congress’s proposal of 124 seats to NCP, there has been no fresh proposal but we are firm on our stand of contesting 144 or equal number of seats.”

In 2009, Congress contested 174 seats and NCP 114. However, having emerged as the bigger party in Maharashtra in the Lok Sabha election, NCP is insisting on contesting an equal number of seats. Out of 48 Lok Sabha seats in the state the Congress won two and the NCP four.

With less than a week left for the nomination process to be completed for the Maharashtra elections, the tussle between BJP and Shiv Sena is leading to fears that the 25-year-old political alliance may collapse. Even as senior leaders of Maharashtra were called to Delhi to discuss the situation, the BJP leadership asked union home minister Rajnath Singh and external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj to talk to Thackeray to explore the possibility of a last minute compromise.

BJP leaders from Maharashtra also met party president Amit Shah on Sunday. If BJP-Sena alliance indeed falls apart, it will turn the focus on the role of the smaller parties such as the Republican Party of India (Ramdas Athavale faction), or RPI, the Swabhimani Party, the Rashtriya Samaj Party (RSP) and the Shivsangram Party. For now these parties are keeping both BJP and Sena guessing. Swabhimani Party president and Lok Sabha member Raju Shetti said, “My party and Mahdeo Jankar’s party (RSP) will go with any party which will assure us that, after elections there will be no post-poll pact with Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) even if it means sitting in the opposition. As our activists are engaged in pitched battle with NCP on every day basis.
 

But what ground analysis suggests, BJP may be right to think it can do better than Sena, but this assumption misses the point of alliances. In all alliances, some parties will be stronger and some weaker at some point of time or the other. Sena is certainly weaker after the death of Bal Thackeray. The question is whether the allies are better off acting separately or together.

In fact, BJP could actually use smarter tactics to gain more seats: for example, by promising to project Uddhav as CM if it gets more seats and some key ministries. Smart tactics work better than loudmouthedness. Especially after the death of Gopinath Munde, BJP does not even have a CM candidate to project. So it is Uddhav by default anyway – if the alliance wins.