How the western alliance was won: the story behind BJP-Sena negotiation

The possibility of a systemic breakdown in the state and BMC machinery gave both the parties cold feet on going alone

Several factors weighed in to end the impasse between the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Shiv Sena. The likely agrement is going to be an alliance with Sena fighting 151 and the BJP 130 with the remainder divided among the other alliance partners.

However, Sena which was initially adamant at giving the BJP no more than 119 seats decided to revise its position realising that a divorce would only make it easier for the Congress- Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) combine to retain power for the fourth consecutive time benefiting from the division of votes in 288 assembly constituencies across Maharashtra.

A BJP leader who did not want to be named, told Business Standard, "Both realised that despite a sterling performance in the Lok Sabha election where Maha Yuti won a record 42 of the total 48 seats, Shiv Sena and BJP would not be in a position to repeat the show if they fought assembly polls independently.”

It wasn’t just the fear of defeat at the hands of the Congress-NCP that was weighing on the minds of BJP and Shiv Sena. The more important calculation was the  fear that should the alliance break down in the assembly, it would break down everywhere: In the Rajya Sabha where the BJP would stand to lose; and in civic and local bodies across Maharashtra where the Sena has political compulsions to stay in power.

Not only would Anant Gite - Shiv Sena's lone minister in the centre - have been the first to lose his job, far more damaging would have been the danger to Sena’s position in India's richest civic body Brihan Mumbai Municipal Corporation where it has been ruling along with the BJP for the last 19 years. Contracts handed out by the BMC are Sena’s life blood. To lose this would have put serious curbs on the party’s finances.

For BJP cadres, the issue was posed as a matter of prestige. Never before has the BJP been more ready and eager to have its candidate as Maharashtra Chief Minister. It's cadres are confident that despite contesting fewer seats, their strike rate would be better than Sena. But that might not have been the case if the party had contested independent of Sena. Within striking distance of having a BJP CM of Maharashtra for the first time in history, the party cadres were persuaded to compromise and not blow up this chance.