Time to introspect for the Shiv Sena

The Congress win has left the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) reassuringly behind. One can anticipate a shift in the balance of power in the alliance. The Congress is in a stronger position and will have greater say in governance and on other issues.

The Lok Sabha polls had dented NCP chief Sharad Pawar. This election has further checkmated the party’s growth. It is now bound to play second fiddle to the Congress, both in state and national politics.

The results indicate that the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) has affected the prospects of the Shiv Sena and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The MNS, by fielding 144 candidates, has eaten into the Shiv Sena’s votes and bruised it both in urban and rural areas. It is significant that a three-year-old party has been able to damage a 40-year-old party. This raises larger issues of the role of divisive politics in the state.

But it’s too early to write the obituary of a leading regional party like the Sena. The party has to introspect and analyse how the Raj Thackeray-led MNS has become a force to reckon with. If no corrective measures are taken, then the threat of people moving away from the Sena to the MNS will become real. It also raises serious concerns about Uddhav Thackeray’s leadership.

Both the Sena and the BJP have to think of a viable alternative to regroup. The Sena-BJP has been out of power for 10 years, so they have to analyse what went wrong that despite anti-incumbency and the non-performance of the Congress-NCP, people have still not voted for them.

(BV Kumar is a professor of political science at the  Tata Institute of Social Sciences. He spoke to Mihika Basu)