Well Begun but Not Yet Done | On the MVA Seat-sharing Deal in Maharashtra

Earlier this week, after months of hectic parleys, the tripartite opposition alliance — the Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi (MVA) finalised a seat-sharing deal. The Shiv Sena (UBT) clinched 21 seats while the Congress and Nationalist Congress Party (Sharadchandra Pawar) [NCP] walked away with 17 and 10 seats respectively.

On paper, despite the vertical splits in the Uddhav Thackeray and Sharad Pawar-led outfits, the Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi seems to be by far the most formidable alliance that has been stitched together against the (Bharatiya Janata Party) BJP in this election.

Apart from the fact that Maharashtra accounts for as many as 48 seats — next only to Uttar Pradesh, the inking of the deal assumes great significance. It also provides a template for non-BJP opposition forces to set aside their differences and rally against the saffron party.

What the MVA Deal Tells Us About its Internal Power Dynamics

The 21-17-10 seat-sharing deal clearly shows the power dynamics within the Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi. The Shiv Sena (UBT) by clinching as many as 21 seats has emerged as the undisputed leader of the alliance. In 2019, the undivided Shiv Sena under Uddhav Thackeray contested as many as 23 seats in alliance with the BJP.

It is not just the numbers that signify the Shiv Sena (UBT)’s pole position in the MVA. The Shiv Sena (UBT) was also able to wrest seats like Sangli and Mumbai South Central from the Congress. Even before the seat-sharing deal was finalised, the Shiv Sena (UBT) had unilaterally announced its candidates for the two seats leading to a war of words between the party and the Maharashtra unit of the Congress party.

The case of Sangli is particularly interesting. Located in Western Maharashtra, Sangli has been a traditional Congress bastion — the party had won the seat every single time till 2019. But the Shiv Sena (UBT), which has a very limited presence in Sangli and in Western Maharashtra, wrestled with the Congress over the seat and fielded wrestler Chandrahar Patil as its candidate.

Much like Sangli, the Congress had to let go of Bhiwandi, where the NCP (SP) had declared its candidate even before the seat-sharing deal was finalised. Local cadres in these seats and leaders of the Maharashtra Pradesh Congress Committee (MPCC) who were left miffed with their allies' actions in the two seats were keen on a friendly fight in these seats. But after intervention from the party’s central leadership, the possibility of a friendly fight has been ruled out.

The challenge to quell the discontent among the local cadres will be a major challenge for the Congress party in Maharashtra. Not just in Sangli or Bhiwandi, the party has had to give up a lot more than its counterparts in the seat-sharing deal. At 17 seats, the Congress will be fielding its lowest-ever tally of candidates in Maharashtra in a Lok Sabha election. Even in its city of birth — Mumbai, the grand old party has been restricted to fighting just two seats — Mumbai North and Mumbai North Central.

Unlike other states where the Congress has witnessed a steady decline in its vote share in the last decade, Maharashtra is a state where the Congress has maintained its vote share. Unlike the Shiv Sena (UBT) and the NCP (SP) which have limited presence in some regions of Maharashtra, the Congress is a pan-Maharashtra party that has a considerable presence in almost all parts of the state. Thus, the party has made greater compromises and incurred heavier individual losses for the alliance. 

On paper, it might seem as if the NCP (SP) has got the raw end of the deal as it is contesting only ten seats, almost half the number of seats the Sharad Pawar-led party contested in the previous Lok Sabha polls. But to anyone familiar with Maharashtra politics, there is no doubt that the number of seats the NCP (SP) is contesting is no indicator of the power that the party and its supremo wield over the MVA.

At 83, the old warhorse, Sharad Pawar is still going strong and has been the most influential person in the Maharashtra Vikas Alliance since its inception in 2019. The seat-sharing deal bears the imprint of Sharad Pawar. Therefore, despite what the seat-sharing numbers indicate, it would be foolish to underestimate Sharad Pawar and his party’s standing within the MVA. 

The NCP (SP) might be in the fray in only 10 seats but the seats it has managed to secure are seats with relatively better prospects for the opposition alliance.  The NCP (SP)’s rationale for only contesting 10 seats is understandable. After the split engineered by Ajit Pawar who has a strong connection with the party cadre in rural pockets, the party needs to rebuild and focus on fewer seats with better prospects and using its resources judiciously is a step in that direction.

Congress: The Third Wheel in the MVA

While Uddhav Thackeray has been the MVA’s most popular face, Sharad Pawar has been the brain behind the alliance, planning and plotting the moves of the MVA. Thackeray’s popularity combined with Pawar’s dexterity and his seniority have kept the Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi alliance afloat despite big setbacks over the last two years.

At the negotiation table, the presence of Thackeray and Pawar helped their respective parties in securing a much better deal while the absence of a leader of a similar stature has cost the Congress.

An important takeaway from the way the seat-sharing negotiations played out is that the NCP (SP) and Shiv Sena (UBT) are much closer to each other than the Congress is to any of these parties.

For a long period, the Congress and NCP (in its undivided avatar) were considered natural allies but the rules of the game have clearly changed now. The NCP (SP) and Shiv Sena (UBT) are the natural allies now and they can sometimes make the Congress feel like a third wheel.

Congress’ Loss, Maharashtra Vilkas Aghadi’s Gain?

Despite the verbal volleys exchanged by the leaders of the Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi in the last few months over seat sharing, the opposition alliance has managed to score an early point over the ruling NDA (Mahayuti). Even as the Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi finalised its seat-sharing arrangement, the constituents of the ruling NDA were yet to arrive at a consensus over seat-sharing.

When Eknath Shinde rebelled in June 2022, Shinde and his camp cited then Finance Minister Ajit Pawar’s bias in allocating resources and funds to NCP MLAs. It was alleged that the Shiv Sena MLAs were deprived of funds by Ajit Pawar. Furthermore, Shinde had defended his move to breakaway citing the harm that was being done by the NCP to the Shiv Sena in seats where the two parties had been directly in competition before the MVA was formed in 2019.

A year later, not only did Shinde’s Sena get into another alliance with Ajit Pawar’s faction of the NCP but Pawar also got back the Finance portfolio.

The BJP is the undisputed big brother in the Mahayuti and it is now almost certain that Ajit Pawar’s  NCP and Shinde’s Sena would have to settle for much fewer seats. The Mahayuti impasse over seat sharing and Ajit Pawar and Eknath Shinde’s struggles over getting a decent number of seats for their parties have helped the constituents of the MVA, specifically the Shiv Sena (UBT) and NCP (SP) in winning the perception battle. Thus, the Congress party’s loss could be the MVA’s gain. Despite the Congress having to settle for fewer seats, Shiv Sena (UBT) and NCP (SP) getting a much better deal could help them stake claim to being the “original” parties instead of being the “duplicates”. 

While the Mumbai unit of the Congress is miffed over being given just two out of the city’s seats, it is a move that could potentially work in favour of the alliance. Keeping aside the recent high-profile exits from the Mumbai Congress, the Shiv Sena (UBT) seems to be in a much better shape to challenge the Mahayuti alliance in the coastal city. The sympathy wave for the Uddhav Thackeray-led outfit seems the strongest in the urban pockets of the state, even more so in Mumbai. To add to it, the moderate makeover that Shiv Sena has got under Uddhav and Aditya Thackeray is likely to help it add to its voter base in the city.

Unlike some other parts of the country where the Modi wave could still dictate the course of things, Maharashtra is highly unlikely to witness a Modi wave-driven election like 2014 or 2019. In this waveless election where the state’s political landscape has undergone unprecedented changes since the last election with alliances and parties being formed and broken like never before, constituency-wise local factors could assume greater importance.

Though the Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi has finalised a seat-sharing deal, its real challenge would be to ensure that disgruntled local leaders and grassroots workers are pacified and made to work for the alliance even in seats that had to be given away to an alliance partner.

There are already worrying signs emerging from the ground even as the state-level leaders of the MVA have emphasised that all seat-sharing issues have now been resolved. After the Sangli seat was conceded by the Congress to Shiv Sena (UBT), Vishal Patil, grandson of former CM Vasantdada Patil who hoped to get a Congress ticket from the seat has hinted at contesting the polls as an independent candidate. Mumbai Congress President Varsha Gaikwad also questioned the party’s state leadership over its inability to pursue an equal and better seat-sharing deal. Quelling such discontent among local cadres to avoid rebel candidates from propping up and ensuring seamless vote transfer on the ground would be the real challenge for the Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi constituents. 

Rebel Candidates, VBA and Smaller Parties Could Dent MVA’s Prospects

In the last three Lok Sabha elections in Maharashtra since 2009, independents and smaller, unaligned parties apart from the two main alliances have garnered vote shares ranging from 15 percentage points to 25 percentage points.

Thus, smaller parties and independents — often rebel candidates i.e. candidates contesting as independents after being denied tickets by leading parties — have been an important factor in Lok Sabha polls in Maharashtra.

Often seats have been won or lost by these supposedly smaller players cutting into the votes of a particular party or candidate. For instance, in the 2019 polls, the Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi which failed to reach an agreement with the Congress-NCP polled about 8 per cent of the votes and dented the prospects of Congress-NCP candidates in at least 5 seats.

This time too, the VBA after failing to strike a seat-sharing deal with the MVA has fielded candidates in 36 constituencies so far. The failure to bring the VBA on board could come back to hurt Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi. It is even more necessary for the Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi to ensure that rebel candidates, disgruntled grassroots cadres or local leaders do not damage its prospects further by causing a division of votes.

Since 2019, the BJP through various means and ways — engineering defections, breaking parties, unleashing central agencies — has made Maharashtra a textbook case of its brand of politics in the Modi-Shah era. But if the Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi is able to hold its own in the Lok Sabha polls and then in the assembly election slated to be held in October, Maharashtra could well become a textbook case of survival and success against all odds for the Opposition parties across the country.

(An alumnus of Mumbai’s St. Xavier’s College, Omkar is currently pursuing a Research Master's degree in Politics at Sciences Po, Paris. His research interests and publications focus on issues and themes like party politics and electoral competition in India, populism, Dravidian politics, voting behaviour, and representation of minorities in India’s lawmaking bodies. Currently, he is working on the ideological transition of the Shiv Sena in the post-Bal Thackeray era. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)