Maharashtra battle: In MLC nomination race, BJP ignores loyalty points

The selection and election of four Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) nominees to Maharashtra’s Legislative Council on May 18 fortified the upper hand that Devendra Fadnavis has over the party’s state unit and re-established the central parliamentary board’s writ over every level of the electoral process. It also left a trail of unhappiness which the central leadership will have to reckon with sooner than later.

A quartet of seniors and mid-level BJP leaders comprising Eknath Khadse, Chandrashekhar Bawankule, Vinod Tawde and Pankaja Munde — who were ministers in the Fadnavis government but denied tickets or lost the 2019 Assembly elections — hoped to make a comeback as MLCs and get a leg up to their political career. Their claims were rejected. The tickets were divvied up among younger persons and newcomers. The decision resurrected a problem the BJP grappled with in the Narendra Modi-Amit Shah era: Do individuals (Khadse and Tawde) who raised the BJP’s edifice in Maharashtra or those with an autonomous base and following (Munde) or loyalists no longer matter?

A Maharashtra BJP leader conceded there was an issue and explained: “Khadse gave his best years to the party. That he spoke up recently shows we cannot control our own party people. The perception is BJP has not done justice to its loyalists. Their disgruntlement won’t change the number game (in the legislature) but we have to battle the unhappy perception.”

 

The ones who made it were Pravin Datke, Ramesh Karad, Gopichand Padalkar and Ranjit Singh Mohite Patil.  Karad — who belongs to the Vanjara community like Munde — flitted between the BJP and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) before homing in on the former. Indeed, he was not the first choice. It was Ajit Gopchade, a doctor from Nanded, who helms the BJP’s medical cell.  
 

After Karad filed his papers as dummy candidate, the BJP was forced to accommodate him. Datke, who in 2019 was appointed as Nagpur party chief, is said to be the favourite of  Nitin Gadkari, Union minister and Nagpur MP. Padalkar, who comes from the Dhangar community (classified as nomadic tribe  in Maharashtra and is weighty in four of the 48 Lok Sabha and 30 to 35 of the 288 Assembly seats), contested as BJP candidate against the NCP’s Ajit Pawar from Baramati in the Assembly election but lost. He was earlier with Prakash Ambedkar’s Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi. Mohite Patil was a Rajya Sabha MP from the NCP, but quit and joined the BJP in 2019 ostensibly to bolster its base in western Maharashtra.

Asked if the nominations marked the end of Old Guard’s dominance, a former Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) pracharak, now in the BJP, replied: “It’s not about the old versus the new, though Khadse and Tawde were senior leaders. The selection criteria were regionalism, contribution to the BJP, and caste.” Loyalty went unmentioned.

A Mumbai BJP leader played it down, saying, “Khadse is a spent force. No other party will welcome him. His daughter-in-law (Raksha) is an MP (from Jalgaon). His daughter (Rohini) got a ticket from Muktainagar (after Khadse was denied one). She lost. It’s not the BJP’s fault.” Another BJP source said: “Khadse wanted a ticket but does that mean he’s entitled to one?  Six months ago, he was denied Assembly poll ticket because his popular image was not good. What has changed since then?”

Khadse’s contention, articulated publicly, was in the years when the BJP was dismissed as a party of the “Shethji” (the moneyed) and the “Bhatji” (Brahmin) in Maharashtra, he “took it to the masses” as a backward caste leader of the Leva caste. To that, a source said, “We have other OBC leaders getting in the votes. They have a comfort level with Fadnavis and that’s what matters.”

 

Munde — who had blamed the BJP when she lost from Parli in 2019 to her estranged cousin Dhananjay Munde of the NCP — beseeched her supporters not to be disheartened when she was overlooked for the council nomination. The BJP initially projected Karad’s selection as a way of “mollifying” Munde, claiming he was her close political associate, but she was not persuaded. “She rightly guessed Delhi and Maharashtra bosses were nurturing another Vanjara leader in Karad. So far the Munde clan believed it had exclusive rights over Vanjara votes,” a source said.

Padalkar’s choice — despite him losing two consecutive polls — was a tactic to “put down” Ram Shinde, a former MLA and only Dhangar representative the BJP had so far. A source close to Shinde said at 50, he was convinced there was no future for him in the BJP.

Keen to put the council election chapter behind, the BJP is now focussed on a “wake-up” Uddhav Thackeray government campaign to galvanise the cadre and make it “battle-ready”.