The Election Commission of India on Saturday announced the dates for Assembly polls in Maharashtra and Haryana. BJP chief Amit Shah, in Mumbai the following day, was expected to meet with Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray and announce a seat-sharing arrangement between his own party and their oldest ally. That did not happen.
Instead, Mr. Shah addressed a gathering on Article 370 and made his way back to Delhi . Those in the know said that the lack of an announcement had more to do with the fact that it is now the “Pitrapaksh” or “Shraadh” period of the Hindu calender, a period when no new ventures are undertaken. That period is set to end on September 28, with Mr. Shah visiting Mumbai on September 26 again , it is expected that the nitty-gritties of the alliance will be tied up then.
What are the sticking points?
The Shiv Sena, along with the Shiromani Akali Dal in Punjab, is one of the oldest alliances of the BJP . The Sena had, under its founder, late Balasaheb Thackeray, held the position of Big Brother in the alliance in Maharashtra, and the party had fought the larger number of the seats of the two parties in Assembly polls since 1995. In 2009, for example, the Sena contested 169 seats and the BJP in 119 out of the 289-seat Maharashtra Assembly.
That scenario changed after the ascendance of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014, with the BJP asking the Sena to understand changed political realities on the ground and ceding ground to the BJP. The two parted ways over this issue before the 2014 Assembly election and the BJP put up a good performance of 122 seats. With the outside support of the Nationalist Congress Party, it formed a government under Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis.
The Sena soon realised it needed the BJP , more to capture the subsequent local body polls in the richest corporation in the country — the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation . The alliance, at the State, local and national level was back on, but the question of a larger share of Assembly seats remains. The BJP has reportedly offered the Sena 126 seats, and kept 162 for itself, but the latter is pushing for an equal number of seats.
The BJP is clear-eyed enough to see that its own areas of “influence” extends to 170 seats, not all likely to be bagged by it and is determined to labour on with talks.
If the BJP manages to prevail on the Sena, it will be a demonstration of just how a national party can prevail over a regional one, given time and chance.
