Uddhav shouldn't smirk at BJP's Delhi defeat: He is next on AAP's hit list

Uddhav Thackeray, boss of the Shiv Sena, has used the Aam Aadmi Party’s victory in Delhi to cock a snook at Narendra Modi. He called the AAP win a “tsunami”, and mightier than 2014’s Modi wave. He can, of course, take pleasure over the BJP’s humiliation in Delhi, but he should know that AAP is a bigger threat to an urban party like Shiv Sena than the BJP. He faces the same fate as the BJP in Delhi if he does not clean up his own act. The Shiv Sena, along with the BJP, controls the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), having won the last election in 2012. BMC is the country’s richest civic body, and it is thoroughly mismanaged. [caption id=“attachment_2095375” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  When it comes to corruption in the BMC, Uddhav has a lot to answer for : PTI[/caption] Despite the enormous wealth it generates for the city and the country, Mumbai has one of the worst civic bodies and poor infrastructure. Shiv Sena cannot distance itself from this mismanagement, even though effective power is with the state’s urban development department, which appoints the municipal commissioner with its executive powers. The city mayor appointed by the Shiv Sena is a mere figurehead. The main reason for the city’s mismanagement simple: politicians, both at the state level and in the city, have used the city as a milch cow for feathering their nests. Most of the money comes from benami ownership of real estate, skimming off money from octroi and toll nakas, and by demanding bribes from contractors who have to maintain the city’s roads and waterworks, among other things. Mumbai is the fountainhead of civic corruption precisely because there is too much money floating around it. The city fathers are thus the cause of its ruin. And Uddhav’s party has much to answer for in this mess. So, if the Aam Aadmi Party were to come to Mumbai and promise better governance and an end to corruption, the same tsunami that defeated the BJP in Delhi will lift Uddhav’s party out of its comfort zone and throw it into the Arabian Sea. So, far from chortling over Modi’s discomfiture, Uddhav should be joining hands with him to ensure that Mumbai is better governed over the next three years before elections are due in 2017. If he does not do so, Arvind Kejriwal will do it for him. It may be the beginning of the end of Uddhav’s key position in city and state politics. The BJP will survive, but the Sena will be history. The BJP has already challenged the Sena’s hold over the city in the last assembly elections by winning 15 seats in the city to Sena’s 14. AAP may finish it off completely. No amount of appeals to Marathi manoos sentiment will save him the next time. Good sense suggests that Sena and BJP should combine forces to improve Mumbai’s governance before it is too late. Uddhav’s party will lose its control of the cash cow if he thinks BJP’s Delhi loss is something to salivate over.