People's Democracy

MAHARASHTRA ASSEMBLY ELECTIONS

Congress-NCP Alliance Scrapes through, Thanks to Its MNS Link

Ashok Dhawale

IT is now almost a fortnight since the results of the Maharashtra assembly elections were declared on October 22. And yet, due to the internecine squabbling between the two victorious alliance partners, the Indian National Congress (INC) and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), over the number of ministers and portfolios to be allocated to each, there is at the time of filing this piece no new government set up as yet in Maharashtra!

This accurately reflects the way the INC-NCP regime has been governing Maharashtra for the last 10 years, in the most casual and cynical manner. The main reason why it has scraped through in this election in spite of its miserable performance is because of its carefully cultivated link with the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS).

GROWING

DISILLUSIONMENT

The table below gives a comparative picture of the seats won and the voting percentage of the four main parties and their fronts in the Vidhan Sabha elections of 2004 and 2009.

Party/Front                                             2004                                                              2009

                                                 Seats Won      Vote %                               Seats Won      Vote %

INC                                                 69                     21.1                                   82                    21.0

NCP                                                71                     18.8                                   62                    16.4

INC + NCP                                   140                     39.9                                 144                    37.4

SS                                                   62                     20.0                                   44                    16.3

BJP                                                 54                     13.7                                   46                    14.0

SS + BJP                                      116                     33.7                                   90                     30.3

What do these results indicate?

In terms of seats won, the INC increased its tally by 13, while the NCP tally reduced by 9. This is partly because the INC fought 174 seats as compared to 114 fought by the NCP this time. In 2004, this ratio was 164:124. Taking advantage of the poor performance of the NCP in the last Lok Sabha polls, the INC wrested 10 more seats from the NCP this time in seat sharing. The INC-NCP alliance increased its seat tally from 140 to 144, which is exactly the half way mark in the 288-member state assembly. However, a dozen ministers of the INC-NCP regime have been defeated in this election.

The seats won by both the Shiv Sena (SS) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) declined: the SS by 18 and the BJP by 8. The seats of the SS-BJP combine declined by 26, from 116 to just 90. This is its lowest tally ever � in 1990, when they first fought together it was 94, in 1995 when they won it was 138, in 1999 when they lost in spite of the INC and NCP fighting separately it was 125, and in 2004 it was 116. Moreover, it is for the first time in the last two decades since the SS-BJP alliance was formed in 1989 that the SS has won less seats in the state assembly than the BJP. Thus the leader of the opposition in the assembly this time could well be from the BJP. This will be an additional source of heartburn and friction between the two.

In terms of vote percentage secured, the INC has almost retained its vote, the BJP has marginally increased it, while the NCP has lost 2.4 per cent and the SS has lost 3.7 per cent. The INC-NCP alliance has lost 2.5 per cent, while the SS-BJP combine has lost 3.4 per cent. In the Lok Sabha polls held five months ago, the INC-NCP had got 38.9 per cent, which has now declined by 1.5 per cent; in the same election, the SS-BJP had got 35.2 per cent, which has now declined by 4.9 per cent.

The total votes gained by all these four parties along with their allies in the 1999 Lok Sabha and Vidhan Sabha elections that were held simultaneously were nearly 95 per cent, leaving just 5 per cent to all other parties and independents. In the 2004 Vidhan Sabha polls, the total vote of all these four parties came to 73.6 per cent. In the 2009 Vidhan Sabha polls, this total has further declined to 67.7 per cent. Thus 32.3 per cent, which means almost one third of the electorate, has rejected all these four established parties in this election. This is an indication of the growing disillusionment of the people with all of them. However, this does not point towards any change in the correlation of class forces, since most of these votes have gone to smaller bourgeois parties and even some right-wing parties like the MNS and to rebels and independents.

The MNS has for the first time won 13 seats in this election and has secured 5.7 per cent of the vote. In the Lok Sabha election, although it did not win any seat, it got 4.1 per cent of the vote. It then fought 12 out of a total of 48 LS seats. It was then leading in 9 assembly segments. Now it fought 144 of the 288 assembly seats, i.e. exactly half the seats. In the Lok Sabha election, the MNS ensured the defeat of the SS-BJP and the victory of the INC-NCP in 8 seats. In this election, it is estimated that the MNS has ensured the defeat of the SS-BJP in at least 47 assembly seats. The MNS helped the INC-NCP in two ways � first, it split the SS-BJP vote and second, it ensured the consolidation of the non-Marathi vote in the cities behind the INC-NCP.

Thus, in spite of the dismal performance of the INC-NCP regime on all fronts during the last 10 years of its rule --- as evidenced by thousands of peasant suicides, back-breaking price rise, breakdown of the PDS, chronic load-shedding of power, poor implementation of the NREGA and the Forest Rights Act, growing unemployment due to recession etc --- it could counter the anti-incumbency factor mainly because of the MNS. During the last three years, the INC-NCP regime constantly encouraged, instigated and protected the MNS in spite of its violent chauvinist activities. In both Lok Sabha and Vidhan Sabha elections, there are reliable reports that the INC-NCP lavishly financed the MNS leadership and many of its candidates as well.

Much of the minority vote went to the INC-NCP, with two significant exceptions of the two large minority-dominated cities of Malegaon and Bhiwandi. In Malegaon, an independent Muslim cleric who had taken a secular stand during the Malegaon bomb blasts and who had consistently campaigned for the release of the falsely implicated Muslim youth in these bomb blasts, was elected. In both the Bhiwandi seats, Samajwadi Party (SP) candidates of the RLDF were elected. Another factor that helped the INC-NCP was the urge for a secular and stable government and the misplaced hopes of the people from the newly re-elected UPA regime at the centre. The Lok Sabha election results five months ago certainly influenced the Vidhan Sabha polls as well.  

While the MNS factor was a major reason for the defeat of the SS-BJP, it was not the only one. In and out of the state assembly, the SS-BJP combine during the last five years failed to provide an effective opposition. There were several burning issues on which it did not put the government on the mat. The association of Hindutva forces with communal riots, bomb blasts and other divisive activities also put off the people at large, although the SS-BJP did gain a few seats in Kolhapur and Sangli districts where they had ignited communal riots two months ago. The SS and the BJP were also in organisational disarray. For the first time there were serious cases of rebellion in both parties over the distribution of tickets. Some SS and BJP leaders who were denied tickets promptly crossed over to the INC and NCP and were given tickets from there.

The BSP had been on an upswing in Maharashtra in the Lok Sabha and Vidhan Sabha elections since 2004. Although it had never won a seat, its voting percentage had grown to 4.8 per cent in the 2009 Lok Sabha poll. But in this election, it dropped by half to only 2.4 per cent in spite of it contesting all the 288 seats and winning none. This was partly a result of its national setback in the Lok Sabha poll and partly a result of the RLDF formation.   

Two other obnoxious features that marked this election were the unprecedented and unimaginable use of money power by all the above bourgeois parties on the one hand, and the proliferation of political dynasties on the other. The money power used in this election by far surpassed all earlier elections in Maharashtra and it made a complete mockery of the election process and of parliamentary democracy itself. As many as 184 of the 288 MLAs elected now are crorepatis. It is high time that the Election Commission of India address the serious problem of electoral corruption without delay.

The offspring (or other relatives) of top leaders like the President of India, Union ministers Sharad Pawar, Vilasrao Deshmukh and Sushil Kumar Shinde, state ministers Chhagan Bhujbal and Ganesh Naik, Congress MP Eknath Gaikwad and BJP leader Gopinath Munde, all won the election. This list only takes into account some of the prominent leaders; there are many more offspring or relatives of lesser leaders who have also won. The daughter of former BJP leader Pramod Mahajan, however, lost. This �neo-feudal� rise of political dynasties is directed towards ensuring that both economic and political power remains an exclusive preserve of the family.

THE RLDF

EXPERIENCE

The Left Democratic Front (LDF) had been formed in Maharashtra on February 6, 2009 at a meeting in the CPI(M) state committee office �Janashakti� in Mumbai on the eve of the last Lok Sabha elections. It comprised the CPI(M), CPI, PWP, JD(S), Swabhimani Party and the Socialist Front. The LDF fought the Lok Sabha polls unitedly and won two seats in Kolhapur district (one of the Swabhimani Party and the other, an NCP rebel) in a popular wave against the INC-NCP alliance. The CPI(M) got around 1,00,000 votes each in the Dindori (ST) and Palghar (ST) seats of Nashik and Thane district respectively. The JD(S) got around 72,000 votes in the Dhule seat. In all other seats the LDF fared poorly.

The 2009 Lok Sabha polls saw the defeat of all three RPI candidates in the fray. Two of them --- Ramdas Athavale and Rajendra Gavai --- fought as part of the INC-NCP alliance while Prakash Ambedkar fought independently. This defeat led to a wave of anger among the pro-Republican dalit masses who rightly concluded that both the Congresses had deliberately sabotaged the chances of their leaders.

Ramdas Athavale took the lead in forging Republican unity and all major factions, except the Prakash Ambedkar faction, came together to resurrect the Republican Party of India, the idea of which had been mooted by Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar. Both the INC-NCP and the SS-BJP tried to entice the united RPI to their fold. But Athavale refused the Rajya Sabha ticket offered to him last month by the NCP and also rejected out of hand the offer of a future deputy chief ministership dangled by the SS-BJP.

The LDF --- particularly the PWP and the CPI(M) --- reached out to the RPI and invited it to be a major part of the emerging third front. The RPI accepted the invitation. Other forces like the SP and some small secular parties under the banner of the Parivartan Front also agreed to join the new coalition. Thus, all the four main forces that had led the historic Samyukta Maharashtra movement in the late fifties � undivided CPI, PWP, RPI and Socialists � along with some others came together to form the Republican Left Democratic Front (RLDF).

On August 24, 2009, the RLDF comprising 17 different parties was formed at a meeting in Mumbai and this development was reported in a press conference the same day. Within 15 days, on September 7, the RLDF declared its seat sharing formula for 200 assembly seats. On September 12, the RLDF held its first one lakh strong rally in Mumbai. On September 15, it released its election manifesto at another press conference and printed one lakh copies of it for distribution in each assembly constituency. On September 23, it began its series of joint election rallies in the districts which continued till the end of the campaign and evoked good popular response. On September 25, it announced its seat sharing for all the 288 seats. In every one of these steps, the RLDF was far ahead of its two main rivals.

One problem came when Rajendra Gavai, son of Kerala governor R S Gavai, left both the RLDF and the united RPI, and declared that he would fight 15 seats on his own strength. Later he teamed up with the Congress, which threw him the crumb of two seats, both of which he lost. It was clear that the Gavai father-son duo had once again succumbed to Congress pressure. But most of Gavai�s associates unequivocally declared that they would remain with the RLDF and the united RPI, regardless of Gavai�s antics.

Although the RLDF suffered from the limitation that it was formed on the very eve of elections and was not the product of any joint struggles on people�s issues, it nevertheless was a positive step in the given conditions. It brought all secular, democratic and progressive forces together on one political platform.

It was expected that the RLDF would win around 20 to 25 seats in this election. It actually won 11 seats as follows: PWP � 4, SP � 4, CPI(M) � 1, Rashtriya Samaj Party � 1, Swabhimani Party � 1. The RPI did not win any seat, but two independents supported by it won. The CPI, JD(S) and other smaller parties won no seats. However, the positive feature was that the RLDF secured 24.64 lakh votes and independents supported by it got another 6.06 lakh votes, making it a total of 30.70 lakh votes, which is 6.9 per cent of the total votes polled. It should be mentioned that the BRP Prakash Ambedkar faction � not a part of the RLDF - won two seats in its base of Akola district.

However, it must also be mentioned that there were opportunist trends in some of the RLDF constituents, which damaged its credibility. The print and electronic media almost blanked the RLDF out when the actual campaign began. Despite these limitations, if the RLDF is built up through joint struggles of the people, and if the above instances of opportunism can be checked, it can emerge as a force to reckon with in the future.

THE CPI(M)�S  

PERFORMANCE     

The CPI(M) contested 20 seats as part of the RLDF. Of these, 10 were ST reserved seats. Three of its candidates were women, and one of them was a tribal woman. It got a total of 2,70,052 votes in all these 20 seats put together (see the details given in these columns last week). Of its three sitting seats, it could win only one � the Dahanu (ST) seat in Thane district. It lost the other two � Kalwan (ST) in Nashik district and Solapur Central in Solapur district --- to the NCP and INC respectively. This was undoubtedly a major setback.

The final conclusions on the CPI(M)�s performance can be drawn only after the district committees and the state Committee complete their reviews by November-end. But some preliminary conclusions can be drawn.

In Kalwan, the CPI(M) had an excellent candidate J P Gavit, a member of the party�s state secretariat, secretary of the its Nashik district committee, state president of the AIKS and six-term MLA. He had won the seat constantly since 1978, with one exception in 1995. However, the CPI(M) still lost the Kalwan seat by a large 16,000 vote margin to the powerful NCP candidate, who was a seven-term MLA and was also a former state minister. In the Lok Sabha election five months ago, the CPI(M) had got 49,164 votes in the Kalwan segment, and this increased by nearly 9,000 votes to reach 58,135 in this election. But it still lost for the following main reasons.

First and most important, nearly 27,000 votes of the SS-BJP were transferred to the NCP for both political and money considerations in this election. This is clearly seen from the fact that the BJP candidate had got 37,524 votes in this segment in the Lok Sabha elections five months ago, but the vote plummeted down to just 10,628 now for the SS candidate. Thus there was an anti-CPI(M) gang-up of all forces, and this vote transfer was managed by the sitting BJP MP who also hails from Gavit�s Surgana tehsil and has always been a bitter foe of the CPI(M) for decades. Second, delimitation had an adverse impact since the entirely new Kalwan tehsil, where we are organisationally weak, was joined to the Surgana tehsil, which is our strong base. Kalwan tehsil has always been the strong base of the NCP MLA who has won from here for the last seven times. Third, it was in this Kalwan tehsil that the NCP MLA poured crores of rupees in the last three days, apart from throwing innumerable mutton and liquor parties. We could stop this in Surgana, but were unable to do so in Kalwan.

In Solapur, the CPI(M) had another excellent candidate Narsayya Adam, a member of the its state secretariat, secretary of the its Solapur district committee, state vice president of the CITU and three-term MLA. However, it still lost the Solapur Central seat by a massive 33,000 vote margin to the INC candidate, whose only qualification was that she was the daughter of union power minister and former chief minister Sushil Kumar Shinde. The CPI(M) got 34,664 votes and lost for the following main reasons:

First and foremost was the unprecedented money power unleashed by the Congress in the last three days. Although the CPI(M) lodged many complaints to the EC against the mutton and liquor parties organised by the Congress, nothing was done. It was impossible to stop this massive outpouring of money. The same money power was witnessed when actors like Salman Khan, Ritesh Deshmukh, Sunil Shetty and Mohan Babu were specially brought to Solapur for road shows as part of the campaign for Shinde�s daughter. Second, a large section of the middle class and the youth (where the CPI(M) is weak), and a big section of minority votes (the Imam of Delhi�s Jama Masjid was specially brought in to campaign) and dalit votes (because Shinde is himself a dalit) went to the Congress. Third, due to delimitation, over 1 lakh 10 thousand new voters were added to the old constituency. Although we did our best to cover this new area, the lack of a party organisation here became a great constraint. Fourth, here again, the BJP-SS, which had secured over 47,000 votes in this segment in the Lok Sabha election five months ago, came down to just 26,000 now. Many of these votes went to the Congress.

The saving grace was that the CPI(M) was able to retain the Dahanu (ST) seat in Thane district, where it defeated the sitting three-term NCP MLA by a margin of over 16,000 votes. In the Lok Sabha elections, the CPI(M) had got 55,298 votes in this segment. They now increased by more than 7,000 to reach 62,530. Our winning candidate here was Rajaram Ozare, a member of the party�s state committee, secretary of its Thane district committee, working president of the state AIKS and a one-term MLA.

The CPI(M) thus achieved a record of winning the assembly seat in Thane district for 31 years in the last eight elections --- in a row since 1978 without a single break. The other distinguishing feature here is that in these eight elections, the party has put up four different candidates, following the practice of giving no more than two or three terms to the same comrade. It has been shown in Thane district that the party cadres work for, and the people also vote for and give victory to the CPI(M), not just the individual candidate. In no other district of Maharashtra has this happened so far. But this is the direction in which we have to go. 

The Dahanu victory was by no means easy. Here also, the landlord-industrialist lobby tried its best to set up a single candidate to defeat the CPI(M). But the latter managed to ensure that this did not happen. Here also, the vote transfer from the BJP-SS to the NCP took place, but it was not of the Kalwan and Solapur magnitude. The BJP had got 24,667 votes in the Lok Sabha poll five months ago; the SS now got only 17,955 votes, which means that nearly 7,000 votes were transferred to the NCP. Similarly, over 11,000 votes got by the Bahujan Vikas Aghadi (BVA) in the last Lok Sabha election were also transferred to the NCP, since the BVA had no candidate here and was in alliance with the INC-NCP elsewhere in the district. Here, too, delimitation was a problem, because more than half of Dahanu tehsil (including Dahanu city), which has been a Congress-NCP stronghold, was joined to Talasari tehsil, which is a CPI(M) stronghold. But the CPI(M) put in special efforts during the last three years to strengthen the party organisation and mass organisations in Dahanu tehsil, and it was this effort that paid off. Here also, crores of rupees were spent by the NCP candidate, but in both Talasari and Dahanu tehsils, volunteer squads of hundreds of young comrades kept night-long vigils in several villages during the last few days before the election to partly prevent the use of money power.

Regardless of the votes the CPI(M) got in each of the 20 seats it fought, it was a heartening feature of this election that the party unitedly led an enthusiastic political campaign in each of these seats. The mass rallies in some of the constituencies addressed by central party leaders were truly impressive. The Dahanu rally of 25,000 in drenching rain, the Surgana Borgaon rally of 15,000, the Solapur rally of 12,000, the Vikramgad rally of 8,000, the Kinwat rally of 7,000 and the Nashik rally of 5,000 were some of the highlights of this campaign. CPI(M) general secretary Prakash Karat, Polit Bureau member and Tripura chief minister Manik Sarkar, Polit Bureau members Dr M K Pandhe, Sitaram Yechury and Brinda Karat, and Central Committee members Mohd Salim and Subhashini Ali took part in the election campaign in Maharashtra.

The CPI(M)�s Maharashtra state committee meeting, to be held on November 29-30, will undertake in detail a political-organisational review of these elections and will decide on the steps to be taken not only to combat these reverses, but also to forge ahead in Maharashtra in the days to come.