Setback for Raj Thackeray: 4 senior MNS leaders join BJP ahead of local body polls

Mumbai: Following the strategy it had adopted during the Maharashtra assembly elections, the BJP is apparently going ahead with a similar strategy of inducting leaders from other political parties with an eye on upcoming local bodies’ elections, including one in Mumbai to be held in the next two years. On Tuesday, four senior MNS leaders, along with their party activists, joined the BJP in the presence of BJP state president Raosaheb Danve Patil. The four senior MNS leaders, all former MLAs, include Pravin Darekar from suburban Mumbai, Ramesh Patil from Kalyan, Vasant Geete and Kashinath Mengal from Nashik.

“Since the MNS leaders are influenced by the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP president Amit Shah, they have joined the BJP. But, we have not given any promises to them,” said Patil. A BJP minister said that many leaders from other parties including Congress, NCP and Shiv Sena are likely to the join the party in the coming days.

During last November, former Congress MP and former minister Gurudas Kamat’s nephew Sameer Desai, who was corporator in Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) for two terms, had also joined the BJP and had been appointed as secretary of Mumbai BJP unit. Ahead of the Maharashtra assembly elections, more than 50 candidates, most of them from Congress and NCP, across the state had quit their respective parties to join the BJP. Subsequently, the Shiv Sena had accused the BJP of deliberately inducting the leaders from other parties from the assembly constituencies that were with Sena. Finally, the Sena-BJP combine broke over the seat-sharing issue. However, learning lessons from the past, BJP seems to be careful about the timing of induction of the leaders from other political parties as the BMC polls are slated for the beginning of 2017.

Amongst other civic bodies, the BJP and many senior corporators in BMC are keen on having its Mayor in BMC in 2017. The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation, the richest civic body in Asia with a budget of over Rs 30,000 crore, has been controlled by a Sena-BJP alliance. The alliance in BMC is headed by Sena with its mayor for past two decades. However, the equations have changed following the recently held assembly election where the BJP won 122 seats while Sena got only 63 seats. In Mumbai, the BJP has won 15 assembly seats as against the Sena’s 14 in the 2014 assembly election. While the civic election in Kalyan Dombivali, Nashik and Aurangabad will take place later in this year, the civic elections in major cities like Mumbai, Thane, Pune, Pimpri-Chinchwad, Nagpur and other municipal corporations will be held in the next two years. BJP leaders say that it feels that having a stronghold at the local bodies helps the party in ruling the state. “In last 10 years, we have brought over 80 percent of local bodies under party’s control in BJP ruled states like Gujrat, Madhya Pradesh and others. Obviously, our next target is to bring all the civic bodies in Maharashtra under the party’s control,” said a BJP leader. Meanwhile, earlier this month, the BJP-led government in Maharashtra has decided to appoint more IAS officers in municipal corporations such as in Pune, Nagpur, Pimpri Chinchwad, Thane, Nashik and few others to strengthen the municipal administration. The move seems to be aimed at having the direct control of chief minister over the civic bodies by appointing the more IAS officers, said a bureaucrat.