Raj Thackeray had made an enormous splash in Maharashtra politics within the 2009 state meeting elections, when his then fledgling Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) scalped 13 seats by using on its firebrand founder’s high-voltage marketing campaign concentrating on the most important political events.
Eleven years later, the MNS’s tally within the Maharashtra Assembly plummeted with the social gathering managing to win simply 1 seat within the 2019 polls and plenty of of Thackeray’s associates leaping ship.
The precipitous decline within the social gathering’s electoral fortunes has been marked by the ideological oscillation displayed by
Thackeray by means of the final decade. From being an ardent admirer of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to indulging in PM-bashing in his public rallies that he held in help of the Congress-NCP candidates within the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, Thackeray has made the MNS pivot a number of occasions in a bid to maintain the social gathering — and himself — politically related.
He shall be on check once more within the coming days as his social gathering gears up for the upcoming Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) polls in a metropolis through which it as soon as had a considerable help base.
It was in Mumbai, in March 2006, that Thackeray had introduced the formation of the MNS after breaking away from the Shiv Sena following a bitter energy wrestle along with his cousin Uddhav Thackeray. In the civic polls subsequent yr, the MNS made its electoral debut with a bang, successful 7 seats within the BMC whereas additionally performing properly in different Municipal Corporations, together with Nashik the place it received 12 seats.
Gaining momentum, the MNS put up a superb exhibiting within the 2009 Assembly elections. Its electoral success in Mumbai peaked within the elections to the 227-member BMC in 2012, when the social gathering bagged 28 seats.
Since then, nevertheless, the MNS has gone right into a downward spiral, shedding its members in addition to reputation. In the 2014 Assembly polls, Sharad Sonawane from Junnar was its lone successful candidate. He defected from the social gathering in 2017. In the 2019 polls too, the social gathering might solely get a lone MLA within the type of Raju Patil who received elected from Kalyan Rural.
What has been equally disturbing for the MNS is the truth 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 three.1 per cent within the 2014 polls and dropped to 2.30 per cent within the 2019 elections.
The social gathering was additionally severely demoralised after the 2017 BMC polls when six of its seven corporators crossed over to affix arch rival Sena, which was then a BJP ally. It was subsequent to this that Thackeray grew to become more and more crucial of the BJP-led central authorities and overtly sided with the Opposition Congress-NCP mix, holding rallies in help of the latter’s candidates within the run as much as the 2019 common elections. It was one other matter that the Congress-NCP candidates misplaced in 9 of the ten constituencies the place Thackeray held his rallies.
Subsequently, in August 2019, Thackeray received an Enforcement Directorate (ED) discover summoning him to its workplace, the place he was questioned for over eight hours in a cash laundering case pertaining to the IL&FS group’s mortgage fairness funding of over Rs 850 crore in an organization known as the Kohinoor CTNL.
Two months later, the Maharashtra Assembly polls had been held throughout which Thackeray’s campaigning appeared to have mellowed with many attributing it to the ED’s motion. In dramatic modifications following these polls, Maharashtra noticed the Shiv Sena severing its outdated ties with the BJP to affix arms with the Congress and the NCP to type their Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) coalition authorities led by Uddhav Thackeray.
Raj Thackeray took this growth as one other pivotal level for his social gathering. In an try to rebrand itself within the state politics, the MNS undertook a Hindutva makeover in early 2020, altering the social gathering flag of saffron, blue and inexperienced stripes into an all-saffron flag with the seal of the Maratha warrior king Chhatrapati Shivaji embossed within the center. This was geared toward roping in disgruntled parts within the Sena which had been perceived to be “troubled” by the latter’s choice to leap onto the “Congress-NCP secular bandwagon”.
There additionally appears to be a new-found bonhomie between the MNS and the BJP now, with senior BJP leaders like Devendra Fadnavis and Chandrakant Patil lately assembly Thackeray. While each events have publicly discounted the potential for an alliance, there are stories that the BJP was eager to prop up the MSN within the state politics as a counter to the Sena in Marathi-dominated areas.
On 2 February, Thackeray convened a gathering with the MNS office-bearers and employees to agency up a method for the upcoming civic polls in Mumbai, Thane, Pimpri-Chinchwad, Nashik and Pune. Refraining from spelling out his rising proximity with the BJP, Thackeray requested his social gathering rank and file to begin preparations for these polls with out excited about any doable alliances.
“As of now our party leader has asked us to prepare to contest the upcoming elections independently,” MNS chief Sandeep Deshpande mentioned.
The problem of the alliance with the BJP would, nevertheless, be essential for the survival and salience of the MNS in Maharashtra politics.
,
With inputs from TheIndianEXPRESS
