Konkan, with its magical blend of rich green hills and glades running down the zigzag coastline of the Arabian Sea, is justly famous as the most beautiful region of Maharashtra.In the political landscape of the state, it is equally famous as the ‘‘backyard of Bombay’’ that has long been the impregnable fortress of the Shiv Sena. In the 1995 assembly polls, the Sena-BJP combine won all but one seat from its four districts (Sindhudurg, Ratnagiri, Raigad, and Thane), and largely repeated that feat in 1999. The pro-Congress breeze that swept through Mumbai in the Lok Sabha polls in May also failed to breach the saffron bastion—it won four of the five Lok Sabha seats, with only Raigad going to the Congress veteran A.R. Antulay.The Sena may still reap a good harvest this time but the cracks within—a result of the waning clout of the ageing tiger Bal Thackeray—are beginning to show up.Nowhere is this more evident than in Chiplun, a picturesque town in southern Konkan dotted with prosperous villas, tender green paddy fields and swaying coconut palms. Long before we reach Chiplun, people along the way tell us that while the Sena will win ‘‘101 per cent’’ in seats like Dapoli and Khed, ‘‘Chiplun mein bahut tough hain.’’The reason: the Shiv Sena bosses in Mumbai denied the ticket to sitting MLA Bhaskar Jadhav who is now contesting as a rebel. The main fight is between Jadhav and NCP candidate Ramesh Kadam, with the official Sena nominee Prabhakar Shinde regarded as an also-ran.In the small town of Khed, Dilip Patre tells us why. ‘‘Shinde to Bambai se parcel hain, Chiplun mein koi nahin pahachanta usko’’ (Shinde is a parcel from Bombay, no one knows him in Chiplun). There is considerable local ire that a Bombay nagar sevak (corporator) was given the ticket instead of Jadhav who ‘‘did a lot for us’’ and received the best speaker of the assembly award to boot. Why was Jadhav denied a ticket? No one knows for sure but their sympathy is clearly with him. Sandeep Sakharkar, a lab assistant in Chiplun town, says that Jadhav was ‘‘insulted’’ at Matoshree (Bal Thackeray’s residence in Bandra) and refused to take it lying down. In nearby Utkaad village, a couple of young men hint darkly that Shinde paid a huge sum to the Sena bosses to get the ticket ‘‘even though no one knows him even in his own ancestral village.’’The NCP-Congress combine is plagued by bandkhors (rebels) but that—given the party’s traditional amorphousness—is par for the course. For the Shiv Sena, run with an iron hand by Bal Thackeray since its inception, it is a very new and disturbing phenomenon.Chiplun is not the only place where the Sena could face trouble. In 1999, the saffron combine won all five seats in Sindhudurg and all seven in Ratnagiri—a feat difficult to repeat in face of internal strife as well as a revival in the NCP-Congress fortunes.In the third coastal district of Raigad (the fourth district of Thane is technically part of Konkan but is more an extension of Mumbai), the Sena is relatively weak and could get weaker still.Parts of the district remain the last stronghold of the Peasants and Workers Party (PWP), once a significant force throughout Maharashtra but now mere dots on the map.The NCP is also a growing force, thanks to Sunil Tatkare who was the only Congress MLA from Konkan in 1995 and a high-profile minister in the outgoing Democratic Front government. He is set to retain the Mangaon seat.In neighbouring Mahad, another NCP man, Manikrao Jagtap, is giving a tough fight to three-term Sena MLA Prabhakar More. A group of Sena supporters in Majheri village in Mahad icluding former sarpanch Sakaram Pawar admit that this time ‘‘barabar ka takkar hain,’’ a view echoed as we go further in.On the ferry ride across the backwaters from Dabhol to Dhopavle further south, Raju Jadhav says there is a ‘‘mood for change’’ this time. ‘‘In Marathi, we have a saying, bhakre karpel which means you must flip the roti now and again or it will burn.’’ It’s another word for anti-incumbency, the tendency to vote out an existing government. Except that in Konkan, it is not the government in Mumbai but sitting MLAs who have been voted again and again who may be at the receiving end of the bhakre karpel mindset.
