Sena’s voter outreach drive seeks to reassert party’s ‘Hindutva’ credentials

Locked in mortal fight with its erstwhile friend-turned-bitter-foe, the Bharatiya Janata Get together, the Shiv Sena’s current voter outreach drive to rebuild its social gathering throughout Maharashtra is a transparent sign of the social gathering’s assertion of its Hindutva credentials.

The four-day drive, which started on March 22 and ended on March 25, coincides with the raids on Sena chief and Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray’s kin and different Sena leaders like MLA Pratap Sarnaik. The Sena, expectedly, accused the BJP of enjoying foul with the Centre’s flagrant misuse of Central companies.

It additionally comes at a time when the BJP, buoyed by its wins in 4 Meeting elections together with Uttar Pradesh and neighbouring Goa, has now set its sights on wresting Maharashtra from the Sena within the 2024 Meeting election.

With the battle now taken to the gates of the Thackeray family, Mr. Thackeray lashed out on the BJP for appearing because the “choose, jury and executioner”.

It’s towards this backdrop that the ‘Shiv Sampark Abhiyan’ — the Sena’s mass contact programme — has seen the social gathering management and staff fan out throughout 19 districts in Maharashtra’s Vidarbha and Marathwada areas the place the social gathering’s organisation has been significantly weak.

Countering BJP

One of many prime goals of this drive has been to counter the BJP’s propaganda of the previous as a minority-appeasing social gathering owing to its 2019 alliance with the ideologically opposed Nationalist Congress Get together (NCP) and the Congress to type the ruling ‘Maha Vikas Aghadi’ (MVA) coalition within the State to maintain the BJP out of energy.

Within the current previous, the social gathering, by its mouthpiece Saamana, has hit out on the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and the BJP-led authorities on the Centre for making an attempt to erase the contributions of India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru whereas Sena MP and Saamana’s government editor Sanjay Raut had repeatedly praised Congress leaders Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Vadra forward of the lately concluded election to 5 States.

In accordance with sources, Mr. Thackeray, throughout a gathering at Sena Bhavan in Mumbai, exhorted his management to search out appropriate candidates to be fielded towards the BJP in future civic and Meeting elections and construct the Sena’s base in areas the place it hitherto is with out affect.

Addressing social gathering staff gathered at Sena Bhawan on March 20 by way of video convention, Mr. Thackeray dubbed the BJP’s ‘Hindutva’ as certainly one of “rank opportunism” whereas particularly mentioning that RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat himself had expressed the view a variety of instances that those that took an anti-Muslim stance weren’t Hindus.

The Sena chief directed his social gathering staff to efface the BJP’s ‘poisonous propaganda’ whereas asserting that the Sena was the social gathering of true ‘Hindutva’ beliefs in distinction to the BJP’s ‘phoney Hindutva’.

In accordance with analysts, the drive was an try and cast off the ambivalence that has bedevilled the Sena over articulating Hindutva ever because it solid an alliance with the Congress and the NCP.

Seat sharing plan

Throughout the Sena’s 25-year-old alliance with the BJP within the State, the seat-sharing preparations between the 2 events had been roughly clear-cut, with the previous normally not fielding candidates in areas the place the BJP was robust. The Sena dominated in Mumbai metropolis and Thane however remained stunted in different elements of the State as that they had been ceded to the BJP.

Since PM Modi and the BJP’s ascendancy within the Centre in 2014, the Sena had been relegated to the position of a disgruntled junior associate in an more and more acrimonious alliance which lastly fell aside over the query of the Chief Minister’s put up after the 2019 Maharashtra Meeting election.

The Sena’s voter outreach drive now goals to treatment the outdated association between the saffron events, provided that each of them are actually bitter rivals within the State.

“The Sena, with this drive, can be attempting to match the BJP’s ‘Panchayat to Parliament’ stratagem in Maharashtra. The Shiv Sampark Abhiyan additionally indicators that the social gathering is very unlikely to ally with the BJP within the close to future,” says senior political analyst Vivek Bhavsar.

The opposite drawback dealing with the Sena is the clear and current hazard of rifts throughout the MVA owing to the urge of each the Congress and the NCP to develop within the State.

Cong., NCP issue

Whereas the NCP is attempting to retain and maximise its management over the ‘sugar belt’ in western Maharashtra, the Congress is consolidating its features in Vidarbha, the place it had its greatest present in 2019.

Whereas the NCP is attempting to make inroads in Vidarbha, the Sena, regardless of its restricted presence (it has one MP from Yavatmal within the individual of Bhavana Gawali) has been making makes an attempt to develop within the area. Sena chief Eknath Shinde’s appointment as Gadchiroli’s Guardian Minister is an instance of the social gathering’s intent as is the current voter outreach drive.