Maharashtra Polls: Within Convoluted Seat-sharing Deals, Two Things Stand Out

In less than a week, barring any post-poll surprises, Maharashtra’s electoral verdict will be out. As campaigning reaches its final stage, decoding the seat-sharing deal reveals not just the internal power dynamics of the two alliances but also provides some indication of what could be in store when the votes are counted on 23 November.As expected, between the alliances, the distribution of seats in the Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi is comparatively more even than the ruling Mahayuti. While the Congress has walked away with 100 seats (the highest tally), its allies Shiv Sena (UBT) with 90 and the Nationalist Congress Party (SCP) with 85 seats are not too far behind. Two things stand out: the Congress contesting the most seats and the NCP (SCP) bagging 85 seats.Labour, Child Marriages: What Befalls Children of Maharashtra's Farmer SuicidesIn the Lok Sabha elections, it was the Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena (UBT) that contested the most seats and in the state assembly elections, it was widely expected that the Shiv Sena (UBT) would get the highest number of seats. But given the Congress party’s inspired performance in June when it won 13 out of 17 Lok Sabha seats it contested, the grand old party was able to argue its case more persuasively at the negotiating table and clinch the highest number of seats. For the longest time, the Congress played the junior partner to the NCP (SCP) and the Shiv Sena (UBT) in the tripartite alliance, so the Congress getting more seats than these two parties is a bit unexpected. Sharad Pawar as the brain and Uddhav Thackeray as the face - this has been a formula that has worked well for the MVA so far.With Congress contesting the most seats and Uddhav Thackeray not being declared as the CM face, this formula has been disrupted. In the past, the Congress party has been guilty of getting overconfident about its past electoral performances. Think about how the party buoyed by the assembly election wins in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, and Chhattisgarh in December 2018 made a royal mess of the Lok Sabha elections in these states in 2019.A more recent case to consider is the Haryana debacle. A more accommodating treatment of its smaller allies and a modest approach could have helped the party topple the BJP. If Maharashtra becomes another case of “within reach but beyond grasp”, the party would have to introspect seriously on how it treats its allies.By letting the Shiv Sena (UBT) contest more seats and declaring Uddhav Thackeray as the CM candidate, in case of an eventual victory, the party could have made the MVA alliance a model to replicate in other states. It could have also improved the party’s ties with current and prospective allies in other states. There is a strong undercurrent of regional pride (Marathi Asmita) in the state and letting a regional outfit like the Shiv Sena (UBT) lead the alliance by contesting more seats could have helped the Congress and the MVA make a point that, unlike the Mahayuti, it is not an alliance led by a national party where key decisions are taken not in Maharashtra but in Delhi.The second surprise about the MVA seat-sharing deal is the NCP (SCP) walking away with as many as 85 seats. While most of the haggling over seats was limited to the Congress and Shiv Sena (UBT) with both parties wanting to contest over 100 seats, it was widely said and expected that the NCP (SCP) would be content with 60-70 seats. But yet again, in a display of his political acumen, Sharad Pawar has been able to manoeuvre things to get a very good deal for his party.It could also be said that his party has a higher proportion of seats with a stronger chance of winning. Hence, much like the Lok Sabha elections, the NCP (SP) could have the best winning percentage in the seats it contests in this election. Unlike the MVA, it has always been very clear that the BJP is the undisputed boss of the alliance and its partners the Eknath Shinde-Shiv Sena and NCP (Ajit Pawar) have not much choice in most matters. The final seat-sharing number validates this view. The BJP is contesting 141 out of the 288 seats in the state. This is just 11 less than the 52 seats it contested in alliance with the undivided Shiv Sena in 2019. The Shinde Sena has managed to get 75 seats, a number that most probably would have been lower if the BJP had a majority of its own in the Lok Sabha and was not much dependent on the seven MPs of the Shinde Sena. Eknath Shinde has surely managed to survive much longer than most of his detractors expected him to. The same cannot be said of Ajit Pawar who barely managed to get 50 seats for his party.It is quite evident that Ajit Pawar’s party is not just the most incompatible party in the Mahayuti but also the alliance’s weakest link. There has always been a steady flow of leaders from the Ajit Pawar faction to the NCP (SCP). This trend is likely to continue with more exits if the Ajit Pawar faction fails to put up a credible performance and does not manage to stay in power.Maharashtra Elections: Why AIMIM's Akbaruddin Owaisi is Back After a 10-Year GapAlong expected lines, the fragmentation of the party system in Maharashtra and the subsequent overcrowding of alliances has had a side effect: friendly fights among partners. As oxymoronic as the term sounds, friendly fights could define and decide this election. The number of such friendly fights is greater in the Mahayuti than in the MVA. In the case of the MVA, the only friendly fight between the three major parties is in Pandharpur, where both Congress and the NCP (SCP) have a candidate in the fray. In the case of the Mahayuti, the number of these friendly fights is as high as eight.Most of these friendly fights are the results of clashing egos of regional satraps of parties who are unwilling to cede ground for their alliances. Hence, it would be interesting to see if these friendly fights have a spillover effect, i.e., where the prospects of the alliances are hit in neighbouring seats when the partners are engaged in a friendly fight in a given seat of the region.The possibility of alliance partners and party leaders or cadres bringing down alliance partners cannot be ruled out. However, in certain cases, the friendly fights are strategic choices, as the BJP-led Mahayuti has done in the Mankhurd constituency of Mumbai. In the Lok Sabha elections, it was the substantial lead taken by the MVA in the Muslim-dominated Mankhurd constituency that enabled it to defeat the BJP in the Mumbai North-East Lok Sabha constituency. Since the BJP has cried foul about what it calls “Vote Jehad”. In Mankhurd, though the BJP and the Shiv Sena (Shinde) have claimed that the official alliance candidate is Sena’s Suresh Patil, the NCP (Ajit Pawar) has fielded Nawab Malik.The political rhetoric aside, the logic at play here is quite evident: the Mahayuti hopes that Nawab Malik would walk away with a chunk of the Muslim votes which would help the “official” Mahayuti candidate defeat the MVA’s candidate, the incumbent SP MLA Abu Azmi. The BJP appears to be adopting a similar strategy to divide the anti-BJP/anti-Mahayuti Marathi votes especially in Mumbai with the help of the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena.For all practical purposes, the MNS could be considered to be the saffron party’s unofficial ally. Raj Thackery has expressed multiple times that his party would support the BJP - if the need arises after 23 November.Maharashtra Elections: High Unemployment Among Graduates, Jobs Voters' Top IssueThe election would most probably settle the question about the “real” NCP and Shiv Sena. While Sharad Pawar’s party clearly seems to hold an edge over the Ajit Pawar-led party, the question of which party is the real Shiv Sena is more complicated and a question that would probably need some more time to settle. In many ways, the Lok Sabha election results have been misread and misinterpreted. The Shinde faction has claimed that it fared better than the Thackeray faction as it won seven out of 15 seats against the Shiv Sena UBT’s nine out of 21 seats. What seems to have been conveniently forgotten is that two of these victories came in the Thane district, i.e., Ekanth Shinde’s home turf, and another victory in Mumbai North-West was by a kitten’ whisker- a margin of 48 seats.Furthermore, in my assessment - based on survey experiments and fieldwork conducted for research during the Lok Sabha polls - the Shinde faction had an exaggerated vote share.Its vote share was inflated due to the Modi factor and because a substantial chunk of support for it came not from supporters of the undivided Shiv Sena but from the BJP supporters. Hence, the Shinde Sena needs to perform better in other regions and not just in the Thane-Konkan belt. A poor showing in other regions would make Eknath Shinde just another regional satrap and weaken his party’s claim to being the “real” Shiv Sena. Unlike the Shinde Sena, the Shiv Sena (UBT) had a more independent base and it transferred votes across the state to Congress and the NCP (SCP). Ironically, that did harm the party’s own prospects as it did not benefit to a similar extent from reciprocal vote transfer from the Congress and NCP (SCP). So, while the Shinde Sena is more reliant on its ally i.e. the BJP, the Shiv Sena (UBT) on the contrary transfers its votes more seamlessly to its allies. For instance, in the Thane-Konkan belt where the Shiv Sena (UBT) faces a stiff challenge and where it is contesting more seats than the NCP (SCP) and Congress, it is almost on its own, as the Congress-NCP (SCP) do not have a strong presence in the region.Despite regional pride and the split of two regional parties have been key issues in the campaign, it is quite ironic that it could be the performance of the two national parties that could be the most decisive factor in shaping the final verdict.Since 2014, the dismal performance of the Congress in direct fights with the BJP has led to the undoing of the party and its alliance in several elections. In a stunning reversal of this trend, the grand old party had won 11 of the 15 seats where it faced the BJP in the Lok Sabha elections in the state. In the assembly polls, the Congress and the BJP are locked in a direct contest in 75 seats - more direct fights than any other two parties. Interestingly, most of these direct contests are in the Vidarbha region. Thus, it could be the Congress’ ability or inability to hold its own against the BJP in direct fights - especially in Vidarbha that could decide this election.(An alumnus of Mumbai’s St. Xavier’s College, Omkar is currently pursuing a Research Master's degree in Politics at Sciences Po, Paris. His research interests and publications focus on issues and themes like party politics and electoral competition in India, populism, Dravidian politics, voting behaviour, and representation of minorities in India’s lawmaking bodies. Currently, he is working on the ideological transition of the Shiv Sena in the post-Bal Thackeray era. He is an incoming PhD student at Temple University where he would research electoral politics in India This is an opinion piece and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)Maharashtra Elections: Who's Leading Right Now? 7 Clear Trends from the Ground

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Maharashtra Polls: Within Convoluted Seat-sharing Deals, Two Things Stand Out

The performance of the two national parties could be the most decisive factor in shaping the final verdict.

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