It Is A Question Of Survival For Uddhav’s Sena

Several disquieting and unconstitutional aspects have emerged from the latest act in Maharashtra’s political theatre. Six of the nine Lok Sabha MPs, elected on the Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) ticket in 2024, switched sides to the Shiv Sena led by deputy chief minister Eknath Shinde—driven not by their ideological revisions or passion to serve people or, even, an emotional need to be in the party of its founder, the late Bal Thackeray. They switched allegiance in the self-confessed ‘Operation Tiger’ of Shinde and Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis. Both gloated over the “success” of this unprincipled and illegitimate ‘operation’, and Shinde remarked in the state Assembly that MLAs of Uddhav’s Sena have lost their mental balance—both mark a new low in Maharashtra’s politics.

While this must be strongly condemned, the spotlight should be on Uddhav Thackeray too. He has formally led the party since his father’s demise in 2012; lived through betrayals by the Bharatiya Janata Party, which was junior partner to the Shiv Sena for over 25 years; found unlikely allies in the Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party to become the Chief Minister; and suffered a setback when Shinde and 33 other MLAs defected four years ago but somehow powered through multiple elections with a good showing since then. After the six MPs left his side, and the elected wings of his party in the Assembly and the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation look ready to implode, Thackeray took it personally, offering to step down as the working president of the party.

This is where he has come up short time and again in the past six years. The era of emotional appeals and politics based on personal loyalty to the Thackerays, an approach perfected by his father, has out-run its course. Now, politics is played out as a spectacle in public and run like a ruthless, result-orientated, business-driven election machine in private. Shinde, with his group in 2022, and the six MPs now show the futility of doing politics the old way when the ruling party at the centre and the ruling alliance in the state unabashedly use power and pelf to politically finish rivals. Uddhav’s lieutenant, Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Raut, alleged that each of the six was richer by Rs 50 crore.

This ‘Maharashtra Model’ deserves the strongest censure. It is not merely disturbing but also damaging to democracy that this IPL-like auctioneering or blatant poaching of elected representatives has been normalised in politics. It is equally worrying that regional parties, especially those that are six decades old and rooted in the soil like Uddhav’s Sena, have not been able to mount an appropriate response to this unconstitutional act so many years and elections later. Uddhav Thackeray and his advisors, as well as other regional leaders, must go back to the drawing board.