Opinion: Maharashtra Muddle - Who's The Real Sena And The Real NCP For Voters?

Maharashtra is likely to be the mother of all battles in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) won 41 of the 48 seats on offer in 2019. Some opinion polls suggest that the NDA may lose some ground, while others predict that the Congress-led INDIA bloc could do marginally better. 

Both the ruling Mahayuti and the opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) alliances seem to have a problem of plenty. With relentless pulls and pressures, seat-sharing pacts still pending, and leaders hopping from one bloc to another, the Maharashtra story is unfolding like a Bollywood masala flick. Maharashtra's political landscape has shifted completely over the last five years, which has complicated matters for pollsters and political pundits. 

Episode 1: Uddhav Thackeray Leaves NDA

After the results of the state assembly were declared in 2019, Uddhav Thackeray's Shiv Sena (SHS) left the NDA due to disagreements over rotational chief ministership. He then joined UPA, and the ensuing alliance, christened MVA, appointed him as the chief minister.

The NDA registered a 51% vote share in total in the 2019 general elections, of which the BJP won 28% and the Shiv Sena 23%. In the UPA, which won a 32% vote share in total, both Congress and the NCP won 16% votes each. While the NDA won 41 seats - 23 went to the BJP and 18 to the Shiv Sena - the UPA got five, four of which were won by the NCP. The Congress got only a single seat. Other candidates won the remaining two seats in Maharashtra. Ultimately though, with the Shiv Sena's 23% vote share shifting to the UPA, the Congress-NCP-SHS bloc emerged as the ruling alliance. Hypothetically then, its vote share increased to 55%, while the NDA's  was reduced to just 28%. 

However, as per the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies' (CSDS) National Election Study (NES) survey, several allies of the BJP had received votes on account of the Modi factor too - that is, one out of every four voters who voted for the NDA alliance voted because of the Modi factor - which complicates gauging the strength of parties and alliances in Maharashtra.

Episode 2: Split in Sena 

In mid-2022, the MVA witnessed a split in the Shiv Sena after a majority of MLAs led by Eknath Shinde joined the NDA. His faction ultimately won the case over the party symbol and was declared the official Shiv Sena. Uddhav's faction was granted another symbol. Of the 18 MPs of the Shiv Sena, 13 pledged allegiance to the Shinde faction. The NDA, hence, was able to recover some of the vote share it had lost after Uddhav's exit.

Episode 3: The NCP Split

In 2023, the Sharad Pawar-led NCP faced a similar jolt after nephew Ajit Pawar left the party with a majority of MLAs and joined the NDA. Ajit's faction too, like Shinde's, won the symbol battle and emerged as the official NCP. And thus, the NDA further added to its vote base. 

Who Has The Upper Hand?

The answer to this lies in the question of who the real Shiv Sena and the real NCP are in the eyes of the voters. Though Shinde and Ajit have the support of a majority of MLAs, will loyal voters of their respective parties side with them? The votes that a candidate wins in elections are made up of three elements: leadership, party symbol, and the candidate's own image. Each gets an equal weightage, and this further complicates the analysis. 

Today, nobody knows who the real Sena or the NCP are for voters. Electorally, this has not been tested yet. Indeed, there have been a few bypolls, but those can't be the benchmark. 

There is also the question of whether the NCP's minority vote will transfer to the Ajit Pawar faction. Will the UPA's minority voters vote for Uddhav's candidates? As many as 77% of Muslims backed the UPA in the 2019 general elections, as per an Axis My India survey. This effectively translates to a 9% Muslim vote for the UPA out of its total share of 32%. This block may or may not back Ajit Pawar's candidates.

A Political Mess

What Maharashtra is seeing is a political muddle. The BJP, too, having recently opened up channels with Uddhav's cousin Raj Thackeray, seems not very sure about its position. Raj Thackeray's Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS), however, has weakened considerably over the years and doubts persist over its prospects.

Different opinion polls have given different figures for Maharashtra, but a common perception is that the NDA could suffer losses. In addition to all this, there is the issue of the ongoing Maratha agitation for reservation, which could drive a wedge between the Maratha and OBC support bases of the NDA. The BJP, together with the Shiv Sena, had won 60% support of both these groups in 2019. 

Strategists in the BJP are hoping that all these issues will be nullified by the national character of the Lok Sabha elections and the Modi factor.

Assembly elections in Maharashtra are also due in the year-end. Can the local factors mentioned above affect the Lok Sabha polls too, apart from the assembly battle? Can there be polarisation on Marathi manoos-versus-Gujarati-plus-North Indian lines? All of these dynamics make the Maharashtra elections a very interesting match.

(Amitabh Tiwari is a political strategist and commentator. In his earlier avatar, he was a corporate and investment banker.)

Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author.