Cong’s the pivot: Can Sena re-route Oppn unity?

In the days when Bal Thackeray, the irrepressible Shiv Sena supremo, ruled the roost in Maharashtra politics enjoying a natural chemistry with leaders of the BJP like Atal Behari Vajpayee and L.K Advani, no one would have imagined that two decades down the line, his son Uddhav and party MP Sanjay Raut would be spitting fire at the saffronists.

That’s happening on a daily basis now with the Sena’s growing proximity to the Congress leaving the Maharashtra BJP jittery while it cannot be more pleasing to AICC managers, particularly against the backdrop of Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee’s jibe that the Congress led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) is over.

That the Sena is diluting its core Hindutva agenda while moving closer to the Congress, has left many surprised but it hardly has any option other than this to keep the BJP out of power in Maharashtra. In the good old days when the Sena and BJP had an alliance going, the BJP had gladly accepted to be a junior partner of the Sena in Maharashtra after realizing that it cannot grow despite the backing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). And the strategy worked well with the BJP playing the role of ‘elder’ brother to the Sena in the Lok Sabha elections and ‘younger’ brother during the state assembly polls. However, it made sure the alliance did not extend beyond the frontiers of Maharashtra thus smartly checking any pan-India dreams the Sena had. All that changed after Narendra Modi became Prime Minister in 2014.The two parties did fight the Lok Sabha elections together but went their separate ways in the Maharashtra assembly polls held a few months later. Though the Sena joined the Devendra Fadnavis led BJP government, it was never treated as an equal partner and had to be content with less important portfolios. Come the 2019 Lok Sabha elections and the state assembly polls and the Sena did not forget its humiliation finally breaking with the BJP and forming a coalition with the Congress and NCP and making the ‘divorce’ official. And its experiment has succeeded with the Shiv Sena-NCPCongress led Maha Vikas Agadhi in Maharashtra completing two years in power. That the Sena has no plans to cut short its alliance with the Congress and NCP became clear when Uddhav’s emissary Sanjay Raut held meetings with Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra and took an unambiguous stance that an anti BJP front cannot emerge as a credible alternative without the Congress in it. This was also a subtle message to Narendra Modi that the Sena can continue to survive and thrive without the BJP.

Besides, the Sena is facing the prestigious Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation elections early next year and it needs the Congress to defeat the BJP. For the Congress which could win only one Lok Sabha seat in Maharashtra in 2019, firming up alliances with anti-BJP parties even it has to be the Sena, is critically important as most regional parties including the DMK, RJD and Samajwadi Party are no longer dependent on the Congress to win elections in Tamil Nadu, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. It is now next to impossible to get Mamata Banerjee on board as she has not forgotten how the Congress allied with the Left and tried to defeat her when she was fighting a ‘now or never’ battle with the BJP in the West Bengal assembly polls. Nor can the YSR Congress Party led by Andhra Pradesh CM Jaganmohan Reddy, the ruling TRS of K Chandrasekhar Rao in Telangana, the TDP, Biju Janata Dal, or AAP tie up with the Congress due to state specific electoral compulsions. So the Congress cannot afford to confront any party which is anti-BJP at this juncture.

The BJP has been waiting, watching and hoping the Maharashtra experiment fails and the coalition collapses so that it can lure the Sena back to its fold. If the coalition continues in power, it could be a major jolt to the BJP in general and Modi-Shah in particular which is why the Maharashtra BJP has sharpened its attack on Sharad Pawar for bringing the Shiv Sena and Congress together. State BJP president Chandrakant Patil, known to be close to Union Home Minister Amit Shah, slammed the NCP the other day in Pune saying, “The NCP is putting in much effort to bring the opposition together. The Sena has joined hands with the Congress and other opposition parties to stop the BJP. They are free to do what they want, nobody is stopping them. However, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP will remain focused on their task.”He also claimed that the BJP will emerge victorious in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections and win no less than 418 seats. It seems unlikely that there will be a major change in the political configuration in Maharashtra ahead of the next Lok Sabha polls with the Sena-NCP-Congress alliance likely to continue. National politics however is still in a state of flux with Mamata trying her best to firm up an anti-BJP a