Shiv Sena’s Support to BJP : a Clever Political Move?

By Deepak Parvatiyar

October 28, 2014

After a brief and dramatic separation just before the Maharashtra Assembly elections, the BJP and the Shiv Sena are courting each other in full public glare for the past few days at the altar of power!

As I write this piece, the Sena has blinked at the Lotus that has bloomed in glory in Maharashtra politics. Yet, what makes their love-hate-love story more twisty and twirly is the BJP’s overlooking of the advances from a formidable suitor, the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP)!

Shiv Sena-BJP Coalition : Happy Re-Union?

The Lotus did prefer to wait in earnest to re-engage its estranged partner of 25 years for a reunion. But can their coming together once again be termed as a happy reunion of two estranged lovers or is it a shrewd act of political manipulations in the theatre of the absurd?

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Consider these points:

• Before the elections, the BJP was perennially under the shadow of its senior partner, the Shiv Sena, in Maharashtra.
• It had never contested more than 119 assembly seats in Maharashtra because of seat sharing with the Sena, which always had a larger share.
• The only time that the BJP tasted power in Maharashtra was in a Sena-led coalition government in 1995.

After the latest Assembly elections, what a dramatic turnaround it has been for the BJP! It scored its best ever performance by clinching 122 seats to emerge as the largest party in the 288-member state assembly. With the NCP more than a willing partner to help it form the government, the BJP can make Sena eat out its hands, and it has been doing so, thus far at least.

BJP Now a Senior Partner to Shiv Sena

The 2014 state election results in Maharashtra are path-breaking in more than one ways. The win allows the BJP to consolidate its position further at a time when it also heads the government at the Centre. It almost doubled its best performance of 1995 when it won 65 seats in Maharashtra. By going all alone at the hustings and emerging as the single largest party, it amply demonstrated that it had emerged out of the shadows of the Sena in the state. While it snatched a dozen seats that the Sena had won in 2009, it led over Sena in 32 of the 52 seats where both clashed directly against each other. A hapless Sena could only snatch one seat from the BJP that the latter had one in 2009.

Shiv Sena: Struggling for Political Space

The Sena, on the other hand, despite contesting 282 seats, failed miserably. Though it emerged as the second largest party by winning 63 seats (a gain of 18 seats from the 2009 elections), the result is misleading because this time it had contested the largest number of seats yet could not even touch its best performance of 76 seats that it had won in alliance with the BJP in 1995.

As the BJP successfully made inroads in the Sena bastions, the latter obviously now jostles for saffron space in state politics. By virtue of being the bigger alliance partner of the BJP in the past, it had for long enjoyed an aura of superiority. But things had started to change after 2009 assembly elections when for the first time the BJP outscored the Sena by winning 46 seats as against the latter’s 45, despite contesting lesser seats in the state. Yet, the deathblow came in the general elections of 2014, where the BJP won 23 seats as against the Sena’s 18. In the process, the BJP’s hit rate of 95.8 per cent was considerably higher than that of Sena’s at 90 per cent.

In these columns, it was mentioned then that for the first time in state politics, statistics favoured the BJP to assume the mantle of big brother – a prospect that could deprive the Shiv Sena of staking its claim at the CM’s chair in case the alliance won the state elections in Maharashtra this time.

Warning bells had indeed started ringing for the Sena and as it stuck to yielding less seats to the BJP, the Lotus snapped the alliance and both went alone at the polls where the BJP proved smarter of the two.

Did BJP and Shiv Sena Contest Separately as part of a Larger Strategy?

Yet, there was ostensibly a bigger game plan than this that we already highlighted in these columns. Given a definite polarisation of Hindu votes as was seen in the general elections, and a perceptible anti-incumbency factor in Maharashtra election, wasn’t it seemingly an opportune time for the saffron forces to spread far and wide than to just get confined to limited seat sharing arrangements? Obviously there was a risk involved but wasn’t it worth taking under the present scenario to test waters and analyse their respective strength in the state?
Hence such political posturing! But already there were enough signals emanated from both sides of an imminent patch up after the elections as was highlighted in these columns. Modi had adopted a soft posture on the Sena in his election rallies out of his “respect” for the  Sena founder, late Balasaheb Thackeray; Uddhav Thackeray had claimed he “still respects” Modi. Union minister and former BJP chief Nitin Gadkari – a formidable Maharashtra politician – had not ruled out the possibility of a post-poll tie up with the Sena; and the Sena’s lone member in Modi’s Cabinet, Ananth Geete, continues to remain a minister.

Yet, the mandate now ensures that the BJP enjoys an upper hand in the political relationship with the Sena. As for Sena, it would have to realise that it is no more in the position to bargain as it was earlier. Yet, together they have a much larger strength then their rivals in the state assembly and both together have emerged a more potent force in the saffron domain.  They remain a natural ally because of a common ideology. This is what the NCP, which after being cold shouldered by the BJP, now realises and talks of abstaining from the voting if the BJP seeks the trust vote in the state Assembly.

The BJP-SS betrothal should therefore last, unless the SS starts behaving like a nagging wife!