BackGadkari-Munde rivalry may cost BJP in Maharashtra
Nitin Gadkari's meetings with MNS's Raj Thackeray and NCP's Sharad Pawar ahead of Lok Sabha elections have annoyed his state rival Gopinath Munde
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Mumbai: Last week former Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president Nitin Gadkari met Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) chief Raj Thackeray at a five-star hotel in central Mumbai. Though media dubbed the meeting a secret one, president of BJP’s Mumbai unit Ashish Shelar immediately tweeted about the meeting.
Gadkari not only gave bytes to national television news channels but also granted interviews to a few Marathi news channels as well.
Gadkari told media that during the 2009 elections, BJP-Shiv Sena lost many seats as MNS ate into their vote bank. “I had met Raj to request him that since MNS has no real national-level ambition, it should not field candidates for Lok Sabha elections and spoil chances of BJP’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi," he told the media.
On the face of it, no one can fault with Gadkari’s argument. During 2009 elections, out of 48 seats in the state, MNS contested 12 seats in the urban belt of Mumbai, Thane, Nashik and Pune. Out of the 12, at 10 places MNS candidates polled more than 100,000 votes. At two Lok Sabha constituencies, its candidates stood at the second place, relegating BJP-Sena candidates to the third place. The margin of victory of Congress-Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) candidates in almost all constituencies was almost equal of votes polled by MNS.
Raj Thackeray enjoys a personal rapport with Modi and often he has praised Modi’s Gujarat model of development. But a close analysis of facts show that the real objective behind Gadkari’s meeting with Raj Thackeray was different. It was an attempt to settle scores with Gopinath Munde, his rival within the party and party’s deputy leader in Lok Sabha.
Meeting the MNS chief is being seen as a second attempt by Gadkari to annoy Munde. Last month, Gadkari had openly praised NCP president and agriculture minister Sharad Pawar and also talked about bringing NCP into the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) fold after the elections. As expected, Gadkari’s flirting with Pawar did not go down well with Munde, who is never afraid of taking on Pawar.
After Gadkari’s elevation to the national level, the state unit was controlled by Munde. Gadkari always felt that Munde wasn’t consulting him while taking decisions regarding the party’s state unit. He was not particularly happy about Munde’s decision to give away two Lok Sabha seats of Madha and Baramati to new alliance partners Swabhimani Party and Rashtriya Samaj Party, respectively.
Gadkari was also miffed at the fact that he was not called to attend three rallies of Mahayuti or grand alliance of BJP, Shiv Sena, Republican Party of India (Ramdas Athawale faction), Swabhimani Party and Rashtriya Samaj Party held over last one month in various parts of Maharashtra.
However, the Gadkari-Munde rivalry is not a new phenomenon. Till mid-1980s, BJP was a minor player in Maharashtra politics. Munde and his high-profile brother-in-law late Pramod Mahajan built the party in the state and by early 1990s, established it as one of the principal players in the state politics.
But when the Munde-Mahajan duo started treating the party’s Maharashtra unit as their fiefdom, many party leaders were hurt. One of them was Gadkari. Mahajan was murdered in 2006 and Gadkari and other leaders lost no time rein in Munde.
After Modi’s appointment as the chief of BJP’s campaign committee in June last year, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) brokered peace between the two warring leaders. It was decided that while the state unit would work under the leadership of Munde, Gadkari would play a national role.
But recent development shows that Gadkari has not been happy to be sidelined in his home state and waiting for the opportune moment to strike back.
Gadkari’s meeting with Raj Thackeray has helped MNS to take centrestage in state politics once again, as it was otherwise reduced to being a marginal player in state politics, and eat into votes of Mahayuti, especially that of the Sena.
The Sena-BJP alliance is hoping that it will repeat its best-ever performance of 1996 when they won 33 out of 48 Lok Sabha seats in Maharashtra. Most opinion polls till last month indicated that the BJP-Sena combine was on course to achieve this mark. Last week’s survey by the news channel CNN-IBN, Centre for Studies of Developing Societies (CSDS) and Lokniti said the alliance may end up with 22-29 seats.
Most surveys predict the BJP-led NDA will require 40 to 50 more seats in Lok Sabha to cross the magic mark of 272. In such a scenario, loss of a few seats in Maharashtra, which were till now considered to be low-hanging fruits by the BJP’s central leadership, can prove detrimental to Narendra Modi’s national ambitions.
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