Raj Thackeray had made a big splash in Maharashtra politics in the 2009 state Assembly elections, when his then fledgling Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) scalped 13 seats by riding on its firebrand founder’s high-voltage campaign targeting the major political parties.
Eleven years later, the MNS’s tally in the Maharashtra Assembly plummeted with the party managing to win just 1 seat in the 2019 polls and many of Thackeray’s associates jumping ship.
The precipitous decline in the party’s electoral fortunes has been marked by the ideological oscillation displayed by
Thackeray through the last decade. From being an ardent admirer of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to indulging in PM-bashing in his public rallies that he held in support of the Congress-NCP candidates in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, Thackeray has made the MNS pivot several times in a bid to keep the party — and himself — politically relevant.
He will be on test again in the coming days as his party gears up for the upcoming Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) polls in a city in which it once had a substantial support base.
It was in Mumbai, in March 2006, that Thackeray had announced the formation of the MNS after breaking away from the Shiv Sena following a bitter power struggle with his cousin Uddhav Thackeray. In the civic polls next year, the MNS made its electoral debut with a bang, winning 7 seats in the BMC while also performing well in other Municipal Corporations, including Nashik where it won 12 seats.
Gaining momentum, the MNS put up a good showing in the 2009 Assembly elections. Its electoral success in Mumbai peaked in the elections to the 227-member BMC in 2012, when the party bagged 28 seats.
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Since then, however, the MNS has gone into a downward spiral, losing its members as well as popularity. In the 2014 Assembly polls, Sharad Sonawane from Junnar was its lone winning candidate. He defected from the party in 2017. In the 2019 polls too, the party could only get a lone MLA in the form of Raju Patil who got elected from Kalyan Rural.
What has been equally disturbing for the MNS is the fact that its vote share has remained in a free fall from its heady days of the 2009 Assembly polls, when it had garnered 5.71 per cent of the votes polled. This plunged to 3.1 per cent in the 2014 polls and dropped to 2.30 per cent in the 2019 elections.
The party was also severely demoralised after the 2017 BMC polls when six of its seven corporators crossed over to join arch rival Sena, which was then a BJP ally. It was subsequent to this that Thackeray became increasingly critical of the BJP-led central government and overtly sided with the Opposition Congress-NCP combine, holding rallies in support of the latter’s candidates in the run up to the 2019 general elections. It was another matter that the Congress-NCP candidates lost in 9 of the 10 constituencies where Thackeray held his rallies.
Subsequently, in August 2019, Thackeray got an Enforcement Directorate (ED) notice summoning him to its office, where he was questioned for over eight hours in a money laundering case pertaining to the IL&FS group’s loan equity investment of over Rs 850 crore in a company called the Kohinoor CTNL.
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Two months later, the Maharashtra Assembly polls were held during which Thackeray’s campaigning appeared to have mellowed with many attributing it to the ED’s action. In dramatic changes following these polls, Maharashtra saw the Shiv Sena severing its old ties with the BJP to join hands with the Congress and the NCP to form their Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) coalition government led by Uddhav Thackeray.
Raj Thackeray took this development as another pivotal point for his party. In an attempt to rebrand itself in the state politics, the MNS undertook a Hindutva makeover in early 2020, changing the party flag of saffron, blue and green stripes into an all-saffron flag with the seal of the Maratha warrior king Chhatrapati Shivaji embossed in the middle. This was aimed at roping in disgruntled elements in the Sena which were perceived to be “troubled” by the latter’s decision to jump onto the “Congress-NCP secular bandwagon”.
There also seems to be a new-found bonhomie between the MNS and the BJP now, with senior BJP leaders like Devendra Fadnavis and Chandrakant Patil recently meeting Thackeray. While both parties have publicly discounted the possibility of an alliance, there are reports that the BJP was keen to prop up the MSN in the state politics as a counter to the Sena in Marathi-dominated areas.
On 2 February, Thackeray convened a meeting with the MNS office-bearers and workers to firm up a strategy for the upcoming civic polls in Mumbai, Thane, Pimpri-Chinchwad, Nashik and Pune. Refraining from spelling out his growing proximity with the BJP, Thackeray asked his party rank and file to start preparations for these polls without thinking about any possible alliances.
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“As of now our party leader has asked us to prepare to contest the upcoming elections independently,” MNS leader Sandeep Deshpande said.
The issue of the alliance with the BJP would, however, be crucial for the survival and salience of the MNS in Maharashtra politics.
