Come September

Senior Shiv Sena and BJP leaders secretly admit to fears that voters will be nudged toward the Congress. To garner support, BJP-SS will look everywhere for support. The likeliest place: rebellion in the Congress rank and file, and its newfound allies, in the eventuality of a hung assembly.

In 1995, when a unified Congress contested assembly polls there were 45 elected independents. But, when a divided Congress confronted the NCP in the 1999 assembly polls there were only 12 elected independents, as rebels from one camp were appeased by the other camp.

To former deputy chief minister Chhagan Bhujbal the fall-out is clear. ‘‘Sonia’s decision will have a definite impact on voters in traditional Congress vote banks.’’

To the NCP, it’s also a time to hope for maximum mileage from the Centre. Given the clout Pawar will hold in the government of his good friend Manmohan Singh, it is not impossible.

‘‘In rural areas drought, the problem of sugar factories and irrigation is harassing us,’’ admits minister of state for revenue, Ramraje Nimbalkar. ‘‘A heavy dose of aid from the Centre can turn the tide in our favour,’’ he says.

To strengthen its base in western Maharashtra, the NCP is eyeing the completion of the half-finished Rs 12,000 crore Krishna Valley irrigation project that the cash-strapped state government had no money to pay for. Nimbalkar believes the Centre is now able to do the needful.

ON the day the will-she-won’t-she drama played out on television screens, the state BJP-SS was glued to their screens. When the shock subsided, they pretended to have lost interest in the foreign origin issue that had been loudly played across election rallies and street corner meetings.

‘‘An internal matter of the Congress,’’ is how a BJP spokesperson ducked the question on the disappearing foreign origin issue.

In Mumbai the saffron combine is only now tentatively admitting to losing Mumbai’s Lok Sabha seats to a stunning alienation of the urban middle class, the minorities and Muslims from the BJP-SS.

The mandate seems to indicates that the anti-Sonia slander campaign by the combine is a strong reason for defeat in Mumbai. Thus with ‘Madam’s’ foreign origin not an issue BJP-SS strategists are now hunting for a strong sustaining issue with mass appeal. Though Uddhav argues that his party’s voting percentage has gone up from 38 to 42 and that it is leading in 175 out of 288 Assembly segments in the State, faced with the tried and tested Manmohan magic on the middle class, he’s realised he has to now talk go beyond the rhetoric of Mee Mumbaikar—the anti North Indian campaign launched by the Sena.

Vocal voices like Raj Thackeray are demanding that the ethnic Maharashtrian card of the party be brought out with a vengeance but moderate voices like that of former Lok Sabha Speaker Manohar Joshi have cautioned against it because the North Indian votebank is critical in many seats.

The Maharashtrian population in the state has consistently migrated to other parts of the country and abroad. An assertive North Indian population has replaced it. Though the Sena leadership is aware that Joshi’s argument makes sense, yet playing the Maharashtrian card is important for the political survival of the Sena.

The Lok Sabha results indicate that Mee Mumbaikar and Shiv Shakti-Bhim Shakti (appeasement programme for Dalits) failed to secure votes in large numbers.

In this context, the central alliance entered into by the Congress with the BSP, SP, RPI, CPI and the NCP is crucial for Maharashtra. If replicated in the state, it will erode a substantial base of the saffron combine. The LS polls also proved that the BSP is a force to be reckoned with in Maharashtra; it made significant dents in traditional Congress pockets.

However Uddhav insists, ‘‘We will once again establish our supremacy.’’ Power by remote control is a Thackeray tradition here. But Sena men hastily explain it’s wrong to draw parallels between the flow of power from Matoshree and 10 Janpath. Balasaheb himself has never contested an election.

When news of Sonia’s step-down travelled to the NCP in Mumbai, they breathed a collective sigh of relief. They can now close doors on a sticky issue that has stalked the party since 1999 when Pawar broke away from the Congress on the issue of Sonia’s foreign origin.

The state BJP openly speculates that the NCP has ceased to exist. ‘‘Since Sonia as PM is a non-issue now, Pawar will join the Congress,’’ speculates BJP’s state spokesman and general secretary Vinod Tawde. However other analysts don’t consider it an immediate possibility. ‘‘Pawar will lose his bargaining power the moment he merges his party with Congress,’’ points out Nikhil Wagle, editor of Marathi eveninger Maha- nagar, who believes that the Sonia impact may be a lifeline for chief minister Sushil Kumar Shinde’s government to bounce back.

Mumbai Political Bureau