Sena to face polls without independent agenda: analyst

Party has to follow BJP’s manifesto and gets no say in it, says political observer

Losing the steam it generated for the last four-and-a-half years by being the principal opponent of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Maharashtra, despite sharing power with it in the State and Centre, the Shiv Sena, a month before the general election, stands without an independent agenda, according to a political observer.

Since it snapped ties with the BJP ahead of the 2014 Assembly polls, the Sena hogged the limelight and set the anti-BJP narrative in the State, Dr. Surendra Jondhale, an analyst and political commentator from Maharashtra said. Despite joining the government a few months after the State polls, its sharp attacks on the BJP over demonetisation, farm loan waiver, Kashmir, and India-Pakistan relations made headlines. It also helped the BJP keep the real Opposition alliance of the Congress and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) at bay by not letting it gain momentum, he said.

“Since it sealed the alliance with the BJP, the Sena is left with no option but to talk like them. It has reached an ideological deadlock. It has to follow BJP’s manifesto and no one from the BJP is consulting them on what should be in it,” Dr. Jondhale said.

He said, in the post-Pulwama scenario, the Sena cannot snatch the hyper-nationalism agenda from the BJP with Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the helm. “Even though it raised the Ram temple issue, it barely has any significance since it formed an alliance with the BJP, which has not built the temple. The issue of

Marathi manoos is already forgotten,” Mr. Jondhale said.

Party sources accept that the Sena has to adhere to the BJP’s line of campaigning. “No other party can attack the incumbent government as effectively. We cannot do that now. We have to sing praises of the party and its leader we attacked a few months ago,” a Sena leader said.

Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray in his speech on Friday in Amaravati said the BJP and the Sena came together as they did not want the return of previous governments which bowed down in front of terrorism.

The seat-sharing formula reveals that the Sena and NCP will be in a direct fight for the maximum seats such as Maval, Raigad, Kolhapur, Kalyan, Thane, Osmanabad, Buldhana, Parbhani, and Shirur. With no Modi wave in sight, Sena’s lack of independent identity and acceptance of BJP’s leadership could cost the party many seats, Dr. Jondhale said.