Maharashtra Polls: The Curious Case of Mumbai’s 36 Seats: Who Holds the Winning Card?

Sabrang Analysis

If Maharashtra pulled a surprise in May-June 2024 and gave a limping opposition,  31 (32) parliamentary seats (out of 48) in the state, four of the six in Mumbai were one by the secular Maha Vikas Aghadi and one narrowly lost, by just 48 votes! Come November 20, this urbs prima, India’s much loved and coveted cosmopolis which, despite being burdened by numbers and a vicious construction lobby continues to dominate people’s dreams and aspirations will again play weather cock for the second largest state in the country. Maha Yuti (MY) or Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA)? In the 36 assembly seats in the state’s capital, these state elections will throw up huge challenges.

How do things look 27 days before the vote is cast?            

The opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi that has an edge today is not helping matters for itself by the petty procrastinations on seat sharing, a malaise that also dogs the Maha Yuti who with better ‘media management’ continues to control the narrative! Today October 23, poll pundits and MVA workers anxiously await the final seat distribution tally if not the actual tickets distribution. October 29 is the last date for filing nominations and the last date for withdrawals in November 4. Scrutiny of nominations will be on October 30.

Maharashtra has seen a political roller coaster since the last Vidhan Sabha elections in 2019. On the point of forming a government, the Maha Yuti received a jolt when the Maha Vikas Aghadi government was sworn in with Udhav Balasaheb Thackeray as chief minister. His stewardship of the state during the Covid-19 pandemic crisis has been hailed by critics and supporters alike and that plus the support drawn from out of a sentiment of subsequent betrayal by Eknath Shinde is something that (Shiv Sena-UBT) is banking on. Challenged however, by a growing acceptability of the rogue breakaway faction, Eknath Shinde, Udhav Thackeray’s failing health and an absence of accessibility for cadres and satraps is one major drawback that the father-son party, Udhav Thackeray and Aditya Thackeray face. For both him, and Sharad Pawar’s Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) this state election is a question of lasting political relevance and survival. No wonder then that media speculation about the Pawar patriarch’s dream of installing MP from Baramati, Supriya Sule as the state’s first woman chief minister has also been rife. The Indian National Congress (INC) –on the other hand—upbeat,  after a good showing in the Lok Sabha elections, winning 13 Parliamentary seats, has displayed its usual nonchalant arrogance rubbing alliance partners the wrong way, not sprucing up its organisational set up and even internally ‘bargaining’ with the MahaYuti/BJP by individual candidates all of which will severely affect the victory of their own candidates. Finally, the MVA’s distancing and reluctance to have a collaborative discussion with the left, CPI-M, CPI, Peasants and Workers Party (PWP) and the newly formed Progressive Republican Alliance (a front of Dalit organisations and activists formed to counter the Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi-VBA) has further created schisms among the natural support base of the MVA.

This is not to say that all is hunky dory in the Maha Yuti camp either, be it in terms of equations or seat sharing. Shinde’s popularity is a serious stumbling block for the RSS-Phadnavis lobby and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is still projected by pollsters to fall below 70 or even 60 seats in the final tally. As recently reported, Eknath Shinde’s Shiv Sena is opposing the BJP’s choice of four candidates in the list of 99 released by the party last Monday. These are the seats on Kalyan East, Tbane, Navi Mumbai and Murbad. One narrative that has captured the imagination of the Maharashtrian people is the cynical ‘Gujarati grab’ of projects and resources as epitomised by the Pm-HM combine (Narendra Modi-Amit Shah). Efforts at fielding ‘independent’ well-healed candidates to cut the MVA vote a la Haryana, pressurize Returning Officers (RO) to not follow the rule book in casting and counting of votes etc are aggressively afoot, with the Delhi regime directly allegedly involved.

All this being the case what do the numbers say?

Of the 36 assembly segments in Maharashtra, in 2019, the MVA (that is the INC and NCP Sharad Pawar) had won 12 seats. In the same 36 assembly segments in 2024, during the April-May 2024 Lok Sabha Polls, the MVA was leading in 20 Assembly segments, suggesting one, that after the ignominious split in the SS and NCP (June 2022), the MVA has garnered a wider support base in eight more segments. The presence of the UBT Sena in the MVA is one obvious reason though both this party and Pawar’s NCP have suffered in their parties’ being split.

The 20 assembly segments that MVA leads in are Anushaktinagar, Chembur, Dharavi, Sion Koliwada, Worli, Shivri, Byculla, Mumbadevi, Chandivli, Kurla, Kalina, Bandra East, Versova, Dindoshi, Jogeshwari (east), Ghatkopar (west), Vikhroli, Bhandup west, Mankhurd and Malad. Of these eight seats had been won by the factions and parties that belong to the MahaYuti alliance: Anushaktinagar (sitting MLA Nawab Mallik, NCP-AP), Sion Koliwada (sitting MLA R Tamil Selvan, BJP), Byculla (sitting MLA Yamini Jadhav, Shinde Sena), Dilip Lande- Shinde Sena (Shinde), Kurla (sitting MLA, Mangesh Kudalkar, Shinde Sena), Versova (sitting MLA Bharati Lavhekar, BJP), Jogeshwari east (sitting MLA, Ravindra Vaikar), Ghatkopar (sitting MLA, Ram Kadam, BJP).

Of the rest of the 16 seats, there are some six seats that respective parties have won with narrow margins. These include three seats won by the MahaYuti Alliance and three by the Maha Vikas Aghadi. Of these six, the Chembur assembly seat could be a cake walk for the MVA as both the sitting MLA, Prakash Phatarpherkar of the UBT Sena and the runner up Chandrakant Handore from the INC (who lost by a margin of 19,018 votes) are from the same alliance; similarly in Kalina, the sitting MLA, Sanjay Potnis of the UBT Sena defeated George Abraham of the INC by a mere 4.931 votes and both parties are in the same alliance now.

The major spoiler this time could be the Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi (VBA) that has announced it will contest from Jogeshwari (east), Dindoshi, Malad, Andheri east, Andheri west, Ghatkopar east and Ghatkopar west apart from Chembur. Raj Thackeray’s Mahanavnirman Sena (MNS) has reportedly decided also to contest with his son Amit Thackeray being pitted against Thackeray scion, Aditya Thackeray in Worli.

In the 2019 polls, the Raj Thackeray MNC had been runner up in a significant number of assembly seats: Mahim (Sandeep Deshpande who lost by 18,647 votes),  Shivri Santosh Nalwade by 39337 votes), Mulund (Harshala Rajesh Chavan lost by 57,348 votes), Bhandup West (Sandeep Prabhakar Jalgaonkar who lost by a margin of 29,173 votes), Ghatkopar east (Satish Pawar lost by 53, 319 votes), Magathane (Nayan Kadam who lost by 46, 547 votes). This time in 2024 the MNS has declared its intention of contesting a total of 250 plus seats of the total of 288 assembly seats.

At the end of the day, upcoming weeks of polling, the grit of organizational heft will carry the day. The manipulations and money power –condoned by a pliant ECI—will help the ruling alliance. Does the Maha Vikas Aghadi have it in itself to rise to the occasion?