Maximum City, Maximum Politics: Mumbai Votes In BMC Polls

After a high decibel political campaign, Mumbai awoke to quiet streets this Thursday. Traffic policemen cordoned off narrow streets that led to voting booths, and at the entrances of these booths, government staffers on election duty unloaded heavy rolls of electoral sheets on makeshift tables and set up drinking water facilities. Thoughts turned to, like it often does on election days, the city’s famed political apathy and whether or not enough voters were going to turn up. Out on the roads, reporters zipped on motorbikes and in OB (outside broadcasting) vans, a vast majority of them headed to booths in Juhu and Bandra, where the city’s celebrities never decline to show the voter’s ink on their perfectly manicured fingers.

There was a large contingent of policemen, and a tiny threat of violence hung in the air, especially after the leader of one political outfit claimed it would have squads out on the roads to act against alleged dual and bogus voters. No disruption however had so far been reported. And as the morning wore on, the numbers outside the booths grew. Many wanted to beat the later rush, and quite a few had just a few minutes to spare before catching busses and trains to distant place for work.

After weeks of intense campaigning, the much-delayed elections to the city’s Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) were finally underway. These were just the few out of some 1.03 crore voters that are expected to cast their ballots to choose 227 corporators from a pool of around 1,700 candidates today.

The BMC elections, which is one of out of 29 municipal bodies going to polls across the state today, is much more than a mere municipality poll. With a budget that dwarfs those of many of states in India (the budget for the current financial year exceeded Rs 70,000 crore), control over it means enormous political and administrative influence. And this election is particularly interesting because of what it means for the many political parties contesting in it.

The BMC has been under the control of the undivided Shiv Sena for many decades now. But Uddhav Thackeray’s Sena (UBT) isn’t that old undivided Shiv Sena anymore. Eknath Shinde has taken away the party’s name and symbols and much of its leadership, and his party’s victory in last Assembly election seemed to suggest that he has taken control over the legacy and legitimacy of the old Sena too. Will Shinde be able to claim that legacy in the birthplace of the party too?

It is this feeling of being under siege that has probably contributed to the coming together of the once bitter rival cousins Uddhav and Raj Thackeray, and the sharpening of their old nativist rhetoric. Despite the setbacks Uddhav has suffered in recent times, it isn’t as though his appeal has entirely diminished. Three out of six Lok Sabha MPs in the city are from his party. And while his faction performed miserably in the last Assembly polls, out of 36 MLAs in the city, 10 hail from his party.

Given how many candidates and alliances are in the fray this time, with Shiv Sena (UBT), Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) and Nationalist Congress Party (SP) forming one bloc, BJP and Shinde-led Shiv Sena forming another, and Congress tying up with Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi (VBA) and hoping to consolidate minority and anti-BJP votes, and the many other independents and those in ‘friendly’ fights, many believe this election will be won on small margins. And here the coming together of Shiv Sena (UBT) and MNS, consolidating the Marathi vote bank, could play a decisive role in its favour.

While it is tempting to look at this election purely as a fight between the two Senas, and Shinde no doubt wants to cement his claim over the legacy of the party in Mumbai, there is also a visible contest brewing within the Shiv Sena and BJP alliance.

Shinde’s Sena and the BJP might have managed to form an alliance for the elections to the BMC, it is no secret that the BJP wants to control the municipal body on its. BJP’s footprint has been growing across the state over the years, but so far it hadn’t been able to break the original Sena’s dominance over the city and its municipal body. With the original Sena now split into two factions, can the ascendant BJP emerge as the single largest party and finally get the BMC under it too? There has been much tension between the BJP and Shinde’s Sena in the run up to the polls, and while there is an alliance in place here, what are termed as friendly fights are taking place in some wards, and elsewhere near Mumbai, especially in places where no alliance was reached, these tensions have even broken out into fisticuffs.

As the polls neared, Uddhav and Raj dusted off old unpleasant Sena slogans and ratcheted up the nativist rhetoric. BJP and Shinde’s Sena responded by promising a ‘Hindu Marathi’ as mayor. This is all a bit of a shame. The city of dreams is in desperate need of fixing. But fixes weren’t the thrust of this election.