The Uddhav-Shinde battle for BMC | Mumbai news

That Shinde, a Shiv Sainik from Thane and a Balasaheb Thackeray devotee, should roll up his sleeves to decimate Uddhav Thackeray’s Shiv Sena and wrest the BMC from Matoshree is a paradox which has been the sub-text of Maharashtra politics since June 2022.

Should the Supreme Court hand down its verdict on delimitation of BMC wards and reservation of seats well in time, elections to 29 big-ticket municipal corporations (Mumbai, Thane, Pune, Nashik, Nagpur, Aurangabad, among them); 257 municipal bodies; 26 district councils and 289 panchayat samitis will be held in October this year.

Battle for BMC

Shiv Sena (UBT) chief Uddhav Thackeray faces a twin challenge: retaining control over his party’s cash cow (BMC’s annual budget is pegged at an astronomical ₹77,000 crore-plus) and, secondly, keeping the Shinde-led Shiv Sena on a tight leash.

The Marathi manoos, whose fealty to Balasaheb Thackeray is unflinching, is the only hope for Thackeray at a time when he faces his worst-ever political crisis, said Sena watchers. However, Thackeray will have to win over the post-2010 Shiv Sainiks who seem a trifle confused – for them Balasaheb is a distant thunder, a hazy myth; while Shinde is the ‘here and now’.

Stories of Shinde’s resource-raising ability, easy accessibility and willingness to offer handsome rewards to those who join him keep doing the rounds in Sena shakhas across the city. A 20-something karyakarta from Mumbai’s underprivileged class finds it hard to resist Shinde’s charisma and clout. Ditto with Ajit Pawar in rural Maharashtra.

Many in the Sena (UBT) think the Thackerays need an in-your-face narrative to scuttle the Shinde factor. Riling Shinde as ‘gaddar’ (he split the Shiv Sena in 2022 and toppled the Uddhav Thackeray government with help from the Bharatiya Janata Party) can’t provoke young Shiv Sainiks to go for the jugular in the run up to the polls, said a Sena functionary.

Shinde, on the other hand, grabs every opportunity to impress the young Shiv Sainiks – he waded into the Aurangzeb tomb controversy not to offer his take on the Mughal history, but to flaunt his Hindutva credentials as against Uddhav Thackeray’s curly-wurly secularism. The Kunal Kamra row was yet another opportunity for him to slot himself as the sabre-rattling hero of rough and ready politics, which Balasaheb worked to perfection in the 1970s. Shinde keeps repeating that the Sena (UBT) has lost its sheen and sting, and that he alone can revive the party’s golden era. Thackerays are yet to come up with a smart punchline to counter Shinde.

“The situation is pretty grim. The BJP has appointed Eknath Shinde to finish off the Sena and he will do it with vengeance,” remarked a Shiv Sena (UBT) MLA, recalling Union home minister Amit Shah’s statement during the state elections in Mumbai, that traitors (the Thackeray Shiv Sena) need to be punished for having snapped poll ties with the BJP. “The punishment is terrible,” the Sena (UBT) MLA rued.

“It’s a do or die situation for Thackeray’s Sena,” said well-known Shiv Sena chronicler Prakash Akolkar. Pointing out that Thackeray’s problem began when his party failed to repeat its 2024 Lok Sabha performance during the state assembly polls held six months later, Akolkar said, “As Thackeray can no longer distribute freebies like those in power do, he may find it hard to keep his flock together. Sadly, a sizeable section of his party workers is carried away by the BJP’s ‘labharthi’ (beneficiary) culture.”

Akolkar was equally critical of the BJP for denying Mumbaikars for three long years their right, guaranteed by the Constitution, to have an elected body in the city hall. The BMC of 2017 ended its tenure in 2022. Bhushan Gagrani, a mild-mannered, yet no-nonsense IAS officer of the 1990 batch, presides over the BMC administration.

While the Opposition Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi (MVA) may well take the BJP to task for handing over the BMC to bureaucrats on a silver platter, the bald truth is Mumbaikars didn’t miss their corporators. Apathy? Dislike of politicians? Both are red flags for democracy.

Shinde’s challenge with BMC

Meanwhile, the two Senas have set their gaze on the Mumbai Metropolitan Region.

While the Shinde Sena is well-entrenched in Thane, Kalyan and Dombivli, it lacks a well-knit organisational structure in Mumbai. The fledgeling party will have to lean on the Thackeray Sena rebels to make a debut in the BMC headquarters, a breathtakingly magnificent structure of 1894 built in the Venetian Gothic and Indo Saracenic style.

As many as 40 Sena (UBT) ex-corporators have so far defected to the Shinde Sena, and Matoshree fears that more will follow in the months to come. “It’s only about money and more money,” rued a Sena (UBT) corporator.

Nevertheless, Thackeray’s Sena still has many bravehearts – as senior party functionary Shashank Kamat of Goregaon thinks the party head will eventually tide over the crisis. “Sena (UBT) has been cleansed of the filth. The defectors have left us. Now the river will flow smoothly,” said Kamat. “For this to happen Uddhav Thackeray needs to shed his Garbosque aloofness,” Akolkar added.

BMC veterans say the decline in its administration began in the 1980s when the Shiv Sena took charge of the city hall. Many Marwari-Gujarati civic contractors, in grey safari and shiny shoes, armed with gold-rimmed suitcases, appeared on the scene. The developer-civic officials-corporator nexus flourished following the state-sponsored SRA scheme. The all-powerful standing committee of the BMC keeps everyone happy, across the political spectrum, while okaying civic contracts which run into crores.

According to Akolkar, the new crop of city daddies may be more rapacious than their predecessors. “Actually, political parties have begun to dread BMC elections as it will open a can of worms for their party.” And for Mumbai as well.

Shinde may find it hard to placate ticket-seekers knocking at his door. On the other hand, the BJP may try to keep a sizeable chunk of tickets, in a 227-strong BMC, for itself in view of enormous pressure from the party rank and file.

Given the fractured nature of polity, the civic elections may alter the equations in state politics, say analysts. For instance, the ruling Mahayuti’s balance of power may be upset if Shinde-Ajit Pawar do exceedingly well in the civic elections across Maharashtra.

Meanwhile, aloof from the heat and dust of politics, Mumbai sprawls languorously, as Gulzar says in a poem, on the shores of the Arabian Sea. It takes everything in its stride — pollution, bad roads, congestion, stress, loneliness, and elections.

Mumbaikars know how to rise above pettiness and celebrate the city as did Sir Pherozeshah Mehta, David Sassoon, Nana Shankar Shet, poet Arun Kolatkar, M F Husain and Annabhau Sathe, the bard of the mill workers. By the way, Bhushan Gagrani, the BMC administrator, loves poetry.