Maharashtra: BJP move foils Opposition’s game plan

But after Fadnavis’s announcement that the BJP would not field a candidate for the mayor’s race and won’t sit in opposition in the BMC, senior leaders from both the Congress and the NCP felt that the Sena would look to bury its differences with the BJP for now.

Further, after suffering electoral setbacks in most rural bodies across Maharashtra, the Congress and the NCP were hoping to cling on to power in 12 out of the 25 zilla parishads by coming together.

But Saturday’s development could also have a bearing on these plans. “While Uddhav Thackeray had earlier declared that the Sena would henceforth have no electoral alliance with the BJP, should these parties come together even at the zilla parishad level, things could become very difficult for us,” said a senior NCP leader.

Out of the 25 ZPs that saw polls, the BJP has already wrested three (Chandrapur, Wardha, and Latur), while the Shiv Sena won Ratnagiri, the NCP retained Pune and Satara, while the Congress won Sindhudurg. While the Congress and the NCP were hoping to come to power in nine other ZPs by coming together, a Sena-BJP post-poll pact would thwart this plan.

Meanwhile, acting on the Congress high command’s directives, the Mumbai Congress unit fielded a party candidate for the Mumbai mayor’s post. “We know we stand no chance of winning the election. But the party wants to send a message that it (the decision) was against divisive policies of both the Shiv Sena and the BJP,” said a senior Congress leader. Veteran corporator from Chembur’s New Gautam Nagar Vitthal Lokare will be the Congress’s candidate. Following the certainty that Shiv Sena’s mayor will be elected, the NCP too decided Saturday to support the Congress candidate.

Interestingly, the NCP turned down the Congress’s offer to nominate an NCP corporator for the deputy mayor’s race. Congress’s Vinni D’souza, a corporator from Santacruz, has been fielded instead.

Congress’s Sanjay Nirupam said, “We (the Congress) had always maintained that the BJP and the Sena will come together. Their poll campaign against each other was nothing but a ploy to divert attention from their corruption in the municipality. As anticipated, the BJP has finally surrendered before the SS, which it had called a ‘party of extortionists’. They have cheated the Mumbaikars by supporting a regime they themselves labelled as corrupt.”

NCP’s chief spokesman Nawab Malik echoed Nirupam. “This is nothing but cheating the voters. They fought bitterly against each other and have now come together,” he said. While the BJP hasn’t sought a power sharing role in the Mumbai municipality for now, top NCP sources said the party’s leadership felt that the BJP would bid for a share in power within two months.