Guarding the Citadel

IN A SPORTS club in the suburb of Borivali, mem­bers are outside awaiting Piyush Goyal. A line of cars comes into the small lane and he strides out followed by an entourage of local Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) workers. They head to the first floor where a small banquet hall is filled to capacity. Goyal is contesting in the Mumbai North constituency in which this club falls. Seated next to him is the outgoing local MP, Gopal Shetty, whom Goyal is now replacing for the ticket. Borivali is in a belt of Gujaratis, traditionally voters of BJP and they also form a large component of the club. An office bearer, while intro­ducing Goyal, says that including families they make up 20,000 voters and are all for him. He also slips in a request that they have been trying to increase the floor space index (FSI) to expand the premises but aren’t making headway with permissions. When Shetty comes on the dais, he talks about running against a wall with the state government about the FSI and adds now that Goyal will be elected, they will hopefully listen. Goyal interrupts Shetty to ask for the logic for the denial of the FSI. ”Only the government knows,” he replies.

When it is Goyal’s turn to speak, it is something of a surprise that he knows many here by first names and professions. He grew up in Mumbai but this constituency was not his home turf. Even­tually, he turns to the FSI issue. He explains that the land of the club is probably marked as a recreation ground in government plans and so those rules have to be followed, the reason for the difficulty. He explains that there is a system to how governments take decisions but he still keeps the door open. He asks whether it is possible that along with the increase in FSI, the club can also give free admission to poor children living in slums. Then there would be a larger public interest involved and something could possibly be worked out. He is both managing expectations while not disappointing the audience. There is nothing to indicate that this is Goyal’s first Lok Sabha election.

This meeting is happening on April 11, almost 40 days before the election. Mumbai North has been a BJP stronghold long before the party became the dominant force in Indian politics. It is as safe a seat as it can get but Goyal’s campaign is not leaving much to chance. His nomination was unexpected for voters of this con­stituency after the Modi government decided that ministers must also get into the heat and dust of contesting a General Election. As far back as mid-March, Goyal’s name was announced. By the beginning of April, he was already campaigning in a seat that almost everyone thinks is already won.

In one corner of a McDonald’s, Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray, or UBT) leader Sanjay Raut is sitting with two men. A steady line of people come and greet him, some take a selfie. At the door of the outlet, a group stands to attention. They are party workers, and not just of the Uddhav Shiv Sena alone. Some tables have other leaders. There are also regular customers, the usual yuppies and students, and they make a contrast with the gritty look of the political workers. The McDonald’s is at the beginning of a flyover that leads to the highway across the railway tracks. It is also right round the corner to the campaign office, which is about to be inaugurated, of the man standing against Goyal— Bhupen Patil, the Congress nominee. Raut and other leaders from the I.N.D.I.A. bloc, like the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) of the Sharad Pawar fac­tion, are here in solidarity. So is Ramesh Chennithala, the senior Congress leader from Kerala who is the party’s in-charge for Ma­harashtra. The spectacle that is a necessary accompaniment to Indian election campaigns must be created with both person­alities and pomp. So in the courtyard of the building where the office is, there are two drummer bands, one doing a Maharash­trian tempo and another made up of a bare-chested Malayalees, flown in from Kerala presumably to impress Chennithala. The heat beats down hard and the sweat rolls off the backs of the drummers as they build up to a martial fervour. There is a small stage and the speeches begin. The thrust of what is said is also the strat­egy against Goyal. Patil is repeatedly referred to as the bhoomiputra, the son of the soil. Raut says that the “parcel” from Peddar Road must be sent back there. He turns to Chennithala and says that only those the Shiv Sena supports in this constituency wins. The date is May 7 and there are only 13 days left for the election and while former US President Bill Clinton once said no election is unwinnable, 13 days is really cutting it fine. In fact, it was only in May that Patil’s nomination was announced, which means he has had less than three weeks to campaign. He maintains he will win and the one-point opti­mism is based on his being rooted in this constituency. “I am a local. I am doing social work here for 32 years. I connect with the people here. My opponent has never stood for an elec­tion. He doesn’t know the problems of the common man,” he says.

Among the people on the stage with Patil, Raut and Chennithala is Vinod Ghosalkar, a veteran Sena leader who has for years been nur­turing the Assembly constituency of Dahisar which falls in Mumbai North. He had left the ground connect to his son Abhishek, a former corporator. The young man had borne the mantle well. In the next corporation, or perhaps, the Assembly elec­tion, he was expected to be in contention. He was adulated even among middle-class Christians, not the typical Sena voter, in a locality called IC Colony. In their Facebook group, they would write about issues, rang­ing from crime to garbage disposal, and al­most inevitably there would be a response from Abhishek that he had followed up and addressed the problem. Then in February, an aspiring politician named Mauris Noronha, aka Maurisbhai, who had once had a dispute with Abhishek and then publicly made peace, called him to his office for an event. It was telecast live on Facebook. In the middle of Ghosalkar speaking to the camera, Maurisbhai took a gun and shot him dead and then ran up to the mezzanine floor and shot himself. Abhishek’s killing left the locality stunned. Soon after the an­nouncement of Goyal’s nomination, there was news that the opposition was considering Vinod Ghosalkar to stand against him. He had sympathy for his son’s death, had a base and an organ­isation. It was the only moment when BJP would have thought it had a serious fight on its hands. But then, for reasons unknown, not only did Ghosalkar not contest but the ticket went to ally Congress. Bhupen Patil is a local politician but is relatively un­known, with his claim to fame having been losing an Assembly election here once.

THE ONLY TWO times Congress managed to wrest this seat in the last 35 years was as part of the two United Pro­gressive Alliance (UPA) victories. The first time in 2004 film star Govinda, who was at the peak of his popularity, won and then in the next election it was Sanjay Nirupam, a former Sena leader who had switched to Congress then. In 2014, Shetty defeated Nirupam by 4.46 lakh votes. Nirupam is now with the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena, which means on the side of BJP. In 2019, Congress put up film star Urmila Matondkar and Shetty increased his margin of victory to 4.65 lakh votes.

A week before the election, the Goyal campaign is relentless and clinical. It is a huge constituency. Every morning and evening there is a route laid over for Goyal to traverse, usually on the top of an open truck, or rath, as they get called during elections. Often he gets off and walks on foot to meet people. There are very few corners of the constituency where he does not show himself at least once. There are two events planned for Monday, May 13. One is a rally in Dahisar, starting off near a subway at 5PM. Later, there is a public meeting where Chief Minister Eknath Shinde will be present.

Before the evening rally, the weather shows a hint of playing truant. Half the sky becomes overcast with thunder and lightning while the other half is sunny. But it does not rain. The numbers in the crowd start going up as they wait for Goyal. There are drummers, old men, children, more women than men. On the other side of the road, from the opposite end, a thin line of people come with tall flags that have a clock on them. It is ally NCP’s (Ajit Pawar’s faction) workers joining in. The drummers turn the crescendo up. And the flags start waving to and fro. At the other end, BJP workers start waving their flags in tandem, reminding you of synchronised dances. Standing on the side in a grey jacket is the elderly Ram Naik, for­mer Union minister and former governor of Uttar Pradesh. He is one of the earliest BJP leaders of Mumbai. He says, “I first won from the Borivali Assembly seat in 1978. I won the Assembly seat three times. Then I won the Lok Sabha seat from here five times. After me, Gopal Shetty won twice from here and both times with the highest vote difference in Maharashtra. BJP is strongest in the state in this con­stituency. Piyush Goyal is from Mumbai. He has handled several ministries and his performance has been excellent. Take railways. You can see the difference at Mumbai train stations and it is be­cause of him. He will win with the most votes in Maharashtra.”

The beat of the drums increases in intensity and then Goyal walks in, speaking on his mobile and then goes up to the rath. Naik joins him. There are the local MLAs of the party there too and the vehicle starts moving. It is at the back of the procession, the long line of party workers ahead of it. The rally winds slowly through streets as people lean in from the windows of buildings to see what is happening. Goyal waves at them. An announcer walks alongside, talking about how Goyal has come to seek the blessings of the people. He lists Goyal’s educational qualifications—he is a rank holder in both Chartered Accountancy and Law. At a turn­ing, a cannon shoots red paper chips that look like rose petals. In between, the BJP Yuva Morcha’s national president Tejaswi Surya hops on and stands next to Goyal. He is part of the many national leaders coming to this constituency to campaign. Periodically, a bunch of people representing housing societies stand waiting on the road and Goyal stops, leans down from the vehicle and puts his hand out, and they put a vermilion mark on the back of his closed fist, a substitute for the forehead. He is garlanded and garlands them in turn, all this while he is up on the rath. The numbers in the crowd keep increasing. By late evening it takes over an entire street of a main market where the fervour ratchets up and then dials down as it moves again to side roads and little colonies, the energy waning and waxing according to the location and no one sure just where they are going but still walking on.

2024 Elections2024: The CountdownBhushan PatilGeneral election 2024Gopal ShettyMaharashtraNorth MumbaiPiyush GoyalUrmila Matondkar