Vendetta is MNS central plank

While all political parties contest elections to win, Raj Thackeray’s gameplan does not seem to include winning even a fair number of the 125 seats his party, the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS), is contesting.

His intent appears to be two fold: render the contests multi-polar and queer the calculations of all mainline parties, and by cornering the young and the Marathi voters, deal a body blow to cousin Uddhav Thackeray.

With the first tactic he expects upsets to ensure a hung assembly, so that even his few MLAs can tilt the scales by backing line-ups that do not include the Sena. The idea is to keep the cousin inches away from power, disenchant more Shiv Sainiks to desert their party, and thereby strengthen the MNS.

His long-term intent is to weaken of the Sena substantively—the logical culmination of the fratricidal political war after he was sidestepped when the Sainiks themselves had expected Raj, not Uddhav, to be anointed the successor if political sagacity was a criterion.

Uddhav’s campaign semantics is political and more Raj-centric, keeping the family and the break-up in the forefront. In the slanging match, Uddhav emerges on the defensive, as if scared of the MNS. It appears he is struggling to keep his Marathi voters with his party, admitting that the MNS can nibble away their support like in the recent Lok Sabha polls.

Raj’s anti-outsider rant strikes a chord in most middleclass Maharashtrian minds, but his violent temperament rattles them. That the new Hindi-speaking migrants are increasing in even smaller cities—Pune, Nashik, Sangli et al—and the official acknowledgement that the state’s Marathi-speaking population is shrinking by one per cent every decade, is unnerving to them.

Picking up 125 seats for contest is the realistic assessment of the MNS’s resources though even Raj Thackeray would not expect to win even half of them. It is as if he is trying to build the MNS for the future political campaigns. Elections are the best way to mobilise people, including those who want to get into the higher tiers of politics.

Elections are when ambitions are stoked, the adrenaline flows and the supporters get more formally organised. In this, however, Raj lost precious time. Narayan Rane and Raj Thackeray’s exit had happened around the same time.

Rane had quit the Sena and contested a by-election on a Congress ticket. Raj too could have jumped into the fray and in the confusion to secure a quick start. He is now catching up, perhaps because he needed to think things out before venturing out in exhaustive, expensive campaigns.

The author is a senior journalist and commentator