Maharashtra is gearing up for the most complicated state election in its history. Each day in the lead up to the voting day on 20 November has brought surprises – whether it is parties suspending rebel legislators, or large numbers of independent candidates challenging political stalwarts, or even rumours of parties themselves switching alliances. Since the principal contest is between two alliances made up of ideologically incompatible partners, there are innumerable possible outcomes even after the votes are cast and the results are declared on 23 November. The murky politics that has led to several upheavals in the state over the past five years, with no state government able to complete its term, has carried on into this election. Maharashtra stands on the brink of the political unknown.
Emblematic of the mess in Maharashtra is the composition of the two major alliances in the fight. On one side is the incumbent Mahayuti alliance comprising the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the faction of the Shiv Sena led by the state’s chief minister, Eknath Shinde, and a faction of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) led by Ajith Pawar. On the other side is the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) comprising the Congress party, the Shiv Sena faction led by Uddhav Bal Thackeray – or the Shiv Sena (UBT) – the faction of the Nationalist Congress Party led by its founder, Sharad Pawar (SP-NCP), the Samajwadi Party and the Peasants and Workers Party of India. It is clear that ideologies have been ignored in these alignments as supposedly secular parties have teamed up with hardline right-wing parties on both sides.
Amid this chaos, there has been a significant development that has been little talked about: progressive voices in Maharashtra’s civil society, who were once staunch critics of the Shiv Sena for its violently right-wing anti-minority parochialism, have now thrown their support behind the MVA – including Uddhav Thackeray, the son of the Shiv Sena’s founder, Bal Thackeray.
MK Gandhi’s great-grandson Tushar Gandhi, the author Ram Puniyani, the activist Teesta Setalvad, the former high court judge B G Kolse Patil and the filmmaker Anand Patwardhan signed an appeal to “vigilant citizens” before the general election in May, urging them to vote for the MVA since “they clearly represent the only viable political option for the people of Maharashtra and the country.” Along with many other writers, activists and journalists, they have endorsed the MVA for this state election as well.