In search of an emotive plank to put MNS back on its feet

In 2009, the party had won 13 seats in the 288-member assembly, and its primary concern is to retain these. In the LS elections, all 10 MNS candidates lost their deposits while the party’s vote share dwindled from 4.7 per cent in 2009 to a sorry 0.13 per cent.

For now, senior party leaders are playing brave but keeping their cards close to their chest nevertheless. MNS legislator Bala Nandgaonkar told The Indian Express, “The assembly elections are going to throw up a different result. And the outcome of the Lok Sabha election, which was centred on Narendra Modi alone, cannot be replicated nor will it determine politics in Maharashtra.”

Notwithstanding the bravado, the party will have to tackle problems rooted in the organisation’s failure to make an impact among people in the last five years. Unlike the Sena and the BJP that have both carved out their individual spaces with a vociferous campaign against the Congress-NCP, the MNS is not looking to play the anti-incumbency card. It is instead looking for an emotive plank.

According to an MNS insider, “In 2009, the MNS rode high on the Marathi-versus-North Indian plank. It connected with the sons of the soil.” But regional chauvinism has brought diminishing returns. That leaves the option of talking development, but that space has been captured by the BJP and the Sena, which have both made public their vision documents for Maharashtra.

Raj Thackeray has declared that the MNS will go solo. Though he is yet to unveil any plans on the number  of seats it would like to contest or what it election plank would be, it is evident from his repeated promise of a vision document that the party has made a tactical shift to “ development-centric” politics.

The MNS has indicated that it will release the document on September 27. MNS leaders have also hinted they are likely to field candidates in about 200 of constituencies.

But given the MNS candidates’ rout in the Lok Sabha elections, the Congress and NCP are still trying to ascertain to what extent they may bank on the MNS factor in the role of “spoiler” that it had played so effectively in 2009.

For the MNS, the dilemma is that the party cannot join a BJP-led grand alliance owing to the differences with the Sena. Despite their apparent softening at Balasaheb Thackeray’s funeral and when Uddhav was hospitalised, the estranged cousins remain political rivals.

According to former Sena MP Bharatkumar Raut, “The MNS can best be described as a tent pitched on a single pillar. The moment the pillar shakes, the entire tent collapses.” Clearly, strengthening the party, building a cadre with various levels of leadership is something that the top leaders lost focus on. Raut added the MNS is entirely built and operated around Raj Thackeray. “The strengthening of the organisational base along with a second rank is completely missing in the MNS,” he says.

Ever since the MNS came into being in 2006, Raj Thackeray sustained the organisation and earned public support through his own voicing of critical and emotive issues. But the last five years have seen a slow dwindling of any emotive plank for him to seize.