By Sushil Kutty
The Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) is coming apart. The Samajwadi Party, which is a component of the INDI-Alliance and has two MLAs in the Maharashtra Assembly distanced itself from the Maha Vikas Aghadi alliance and took part in the oath-taking ceremony, which the Congress, Shiv Sena (UBT) and the Nationalist Congress Party (Sharad Pawar) boycotted. This apart, there are reports that the Shiv Sena of Uddhav Thackeray is mulling a decision to quit the MVA and return to the Hindutva fold!
So, the dissonance in the INDI-Alliance is palpable and with the Mumbai local polls rolling in fast, MVA may not last beyond the next round of elections after the drubbing it received in the Assembly elections, which the Mahayuti won on the planks of unabashed Hindutva and fiery anti-Muslim rhetoric with the BJP on the top of its “Hindu-Muslim” game.
The Samajwadi Party’s decision to take the oath took the MVA by surprise, a setback not only to the MVA but also a warning shot across the bows for the INDI-Alliance. The INDI-Alliance appears leaderless and rudderless with Trinamool Supremo Mamata Banerjee telling the alliance pointblank that she will lead the INDI-Alliance if the alliance wanted her to; after all but for her, there wouldn’t have been an INDI-Alliance!
That sounds dangerously ‘finito’ to the Congress and Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi, who has put all his eggs in the Modi-Adani basket and couldn’t cross the stop-line on the Meerut Expressway en-route to violence-hit Sambhal, where the Samajwadi Party is ‘King’. Mamata Banerjee wouldn’t mind the LoP post and neither will the Samajwadi Party’s Akhilesh Yadav, both of whom consider themselves more suitable for the post than the Congress party’s one-and-only-fit for all party-linked posts including the one courtesy Congress getting 99 Lok Sabha seats.
And, if people haven’t noticed, nobody is talking of Uddhav Thackeray anymore. It is as if the surname ‘Thackeray’ has fallen off the cliff into the deepest gorge this side of the Three Gorges Dam in China, which straddles the Yangtze. If any regional satrap of a state party has lost relevance after a single state election, ever, it is our man Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray, father of Aditya Thackeray, and one who is currently nursing a suicidal ideological dilemma.
Reports that Uddhav Thackeray’s conceit will be the end of the truncated Shiv Sena (UBT)is being spoken about in loud whispers both this side and that side of the Narmada. The only UBT leaders who haven’t lost their tongues are Sanjay Raut and that lady Priyanka Chaturvedi, whose shift to Hindutva politics was abrupt and unexpected.
Only then did Uddhav Thackeray take to secularism like fish to water. Sanjay’s confidence is the only thing going for the cut-to-size Shiv Sena UBT. Raut’s off the cuff remarks generally, one and all, result in controversies and he forgets he has a newspaper with which he can run riot, something which he has often resorted to with mixed results. The Shiv Sena UBT needs a cartoonist of the calibre of Balasaheb Thackeray more than an executive editor with a felicity in ‘Ukhaad Diya’ words.
The thing is, with its two MLAs taking oath in the assembly despite MVA boycotting the oath-taking ceremony, the Samajwadi Party has put the focus on the near-total collapse of the Maha Vikas Aghadi and the effect of this on the INDI-Alliance. There are other signs of the INDI-Alliance’s disarray, particularly after its performance in the Haryana and Maharashtra elections.
The cracks in both the MVA and the INDI-Alliance are wide-and-open and speak volumes about the state of affairs in the Opposition. And the Samajwadi Party is backing Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee to take over the leadership role in the INDI-Alliance. Where that will leave Uddhav Thackeray is anybody’s guess. If any politician who switched sides and switched ideology so severely, it is Uddhav Thackeray, the punishment as if dealt from Heaven, where “resides” the father of all the Thackeray!
Shiv Sena (UBT) was not only defeated in the assembly elections by the BJP, its former alliance partner, but also by the breakaway Shinde Sena, which broke away from Uddhav Sena and took charge of its ideology, too. Uddhav Thackeray is the biggest loser in the Maharashtra Assembly elections, his political acuity tested to the limit and found woefully lacking. And if there’s a bigger loser, it is his son Aditya Thackeray, who is following in his father’s footsteps, unlike the father who refused to toe his father’s line! (IPA Service)
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