Goodbye forever? Shiv Sena might reject BJP if the exit polls prove true

With all but one of the exit polls conducted after the Maharashtra state assembly indicating that the BJP will not be able to form a government on its own, the party has reportedly already begun to think about who it could approach for an alliance once results are revealed on Sunday. A report in the Times of India quoted several BJP leaders as saying that they would talk to the Shiv Sena for a post-poll tie up. The Shiv Sena has been projected as the second largest party in every exit poll. This development is not altogether surprising, because despite the split in the 25-year-old alliance, some doors were left slightly ajar for a possible reunion. Prime Minister Narendra Modi refrained from attacking the party because of his ‘respect’ for late leader Bal Thackeray, while the NDA alliance at the centre remained intact. Uddhav Thackeray for the most part kept reiterating his ‘respect’ for PM Modi, even while lampooning the ‘back stabbing’ and ‘selfish’ regional leaders of the BJP. However Thackeray for his part is reportedly not keen on tying up with the BJP no matter the result of the state polls. [caption id=“attachment_1760663” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Parag Shinde/Firstpost[/caption] The Times of India quoted a ‘key Sena functionary’ as saying,“He thinks that if we join the BJP government, the Sena will be accused by the Congress, NCP, MNS and the media of being power hungry. The Sena, he thinks, will lose its moral sheen… “Yet another deterrent (in being part of the BJP regime) is Thackeray’s acerbic onslaught on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP national president Amit Shah during the poll campaign. “Even Sainiks will be confused if, after all that happened between the two parties in the last two months, Uddhav-ji decides to lend support to the BJP government” In his most personal attack, in an editorial in the Shiv Sena mouthpiece Saamna a day before polling, Thackeray said Modi did not win the Lok Sabha elections on his own. “Now when Modi is the PM, he does not recognise the Maharashtra party anymore. He had indicated this at the time of the formation of Cabinet after winning Lok Sabha elections”, the editorial said. The Shiv Sena chief added that if his party did not extend support, even Modi’s father, Damodardas, could not have won a majority in the Lok Sabha elections. The piece was immediately decried by BJP leaders as an ‘insult’ to the Prime Minister. Another fear, according to the report is that the BJP will only offer the Sena ’light portfolios’ in the event of a tie-up, which would only add insult to injury. This ties in with a comment by _Firstpost_ columnist Mahesh Vijapurkar that, “The BJP has shown to the Shiv Sena that the past arithmetic of the latter being a dominant party is no more valid. It is no more to be seen as a party benefiting from the Sena’s strength in Maharashtra. Their parting could well be final.” Furthermore, as pointed out by Vijapurkar, the post poll results indicate that the Shiv Sena and Uddhav may well have come into their own: “He battled the worst odds, resolutely faced the onslaught of a confident, recently elected Prime Minister, Narendra Modi. He alone matched the number of the rallies, the size of the audiences the major opponent managed. He gave no quarter, nor sought one. Nor lose his nerve.” The Sena is projected to win 59 constituencies on the lower end and 77 on the higher end. It is quite a performance for a party that had won 73 seats in 1995, which helped them lead an alliance with BJP that unseated the Congress. In 1999, again in alliance with the BJP, Sena bagged 69. However, in 2004 the Sena’s tally dropped to 62 and by 2009 it hit a low of 44 seats. If the party does end up with 77 seats, it would be the best performance by the party in its history, and also end the Shiv Sena - MNS debate once and for all. As _Firstpost_ editor R Jagannathan said , “look at how the Maharashtrian voter treated the voyeurs in the game. The Maharashtra Navnirman Sena, despite its loud Marathi manoos rhetoric, has been left exactly where it was before - but defanged and without the ability to distort the voter’s message. The voter shrewdly chose the saner version of Maharashtrian pride - the Sena - and refused to split this vote.” And the Times of India report says that this is something Uddhav will have in mind. It quotes a leader close Thackeray as saying that Matoshree’s principal worry is that by teaming up with the BJP, the Sena may lose its regional force status to the MNS. Of course, the allure of power is hard to resist. Other leaders have told TOI that the party should not ‘wallow in the past’ and look ahead to the future. This means that there will be an influential arm of the party that will be pushing for Thackeray to go ahead and tie up with the BJP. How everything will play out will remain to be seen in the wake of the results and how close they come to the exit polls. Either way the next week or so could prove to be extremely exciting.