Politics | Lok Sabha Polls 2019: Mumbai seats are wide open to all parties

Police personnel assist a senior citizen at a polling station in Mumbai, Maharashtra. (Image: Twitter/@MumbaiPolice)

Sujata Anandan

Perhaps it was inadvisable on the part of to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to field Malegaon terror-accused Pragya Singh Thakur from Bhopal just days ahead of polling in Mumbai on April 29. Or if it did, it should have made sure she did not shoot off her mouth over Hemant Karkare, the chief of the Anti-Terrorism Squad, who died defending Mumbai against Pakistani terrorists on the night of November 26, 2008.

Thakur claimed Karkare was killed in action because she had cursed him for arresting and allegedly torturing her in custody.

As reports poured out that she was lying, refused to submit herself to medical examination to prove the torture and that the Supreme Court dismissed her application in this regard, the usually somnolent Mumbai galvanised itself and reacted with outrage. There were hundreds of appeals on social media to Mumbai, which concerns itself with little but its own business of living, to come out and vote in large numbers against hate and terror. A city that was not moved to vote in large numbers even months after the Mumbai 26/11 attacks (at the 2009 elections 40 per cent of Mumbai came out to vote) stood by the officer who died saving their city and registered a voting percentage of a little over 50 per cent.

There are large sections of Dalits and Muslims in various pockets in Mumbai. Most reports suggest they were galvanised in favour of the Congress-Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) combine, with little dent being made by Prakash Ambedkar’s Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi and Asaduddin Owaisi’s All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen coming together. While that vote might always have been expected to go against the Shiv Sena-BJP combine, the saffron allies might have wished there would be no further division of the votes that helped them to sweep all six seats of Mumbai’s Lok Sabha seats in 2014.

That, however, was not to be, in more ways than one.

Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) President Raj Thackeray's campaign against Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP is expected to have divided the votes of the nearly 40 per cent Maharashtrians in the city who had voted in tandem with Gujaratis and north Indians in 2014 for the BJP. That the diversion of Marathi votes have happened can be gauged from the fact that Congress candidate from North Mumbai, actor-turned-politician Urmila Matondkar, the surprise element at this election, tweeted on polling day thanking the MNS for its support.

The Congress sprung her candidature on the unsuspecting people at the eleventh hour but Matondkar proved no wilting lily or a photo-op politician unlike other film stars who have attracted much criticism for their cavalier style of campaigning and their lack of connect with the masses. Matondkar swiftly turned the campaign into one between Mumbai’s Marathi daughter and an outsider — sitting MP Gopal Shetty of the BJP who began to look like a novice beside her systematic, sustained and informed campaign. Matondkar turned a given seat for the BJP into an open contest between Shetty and her, and all the bets are now off on this one.

The other certain seat for the BJP, Mumbai North East, was needlessly messed up by the party which was desperate for an alliance with the Shiv Sena. Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray’s price for that alliance was the denial of a ticket to BJP’s sitting MP Kirit Somaiya who had targeted him over the past years for his stands against Modi and the BJP. Party workers were upset that BJP leaders did not stand by Somaiya who was the only sitting MP denied a ticket.

That resentment, combined with the lack of co-ordination on all Mumbai seats between Shiv Sena and BJP workers is likely to affect the BJP’s prospects on this seat in favour of the NCP which is contesting this singular seat from Mumbai as against the Congress’s five.

Of the six Mumbai seats, the saffron allies are contesting three each and while a few months back all six were for the BJP-Sena to take, Mumbai became an uphill task and evened up a bit in favour of the Congress-NCP.

The biggest upset this election season, however, was not political but from the economic front — halfway through the campaign, leading industrialist Mukesh Ambani, along with Uday Kotak, came out in open endorsement of Congress candidate from South Mumbai Milind Deora .This is believed to have confused the elite voters in this constituency and shook up the traders on the stock market somewhat. The odds on the betting market thus improved in favour of Deora.

Keeping up this narrative, on polling day, another top industrialist Anand Mahindra, chairman of Mahindra group, hinted at a change of guard — “Even if a coalition government comes to power, I hope they will keep up the steady pace of growth and development,” he said. Both sides could dispute that statement — the BJP-led NDA has more parties in it than the Congress-led UPA, but it is believed that Mahindra was referring to the general mishmash of parties that the UPA is likely to be after the elections.

The fight in Mumbai is thus on several levels — the poor versus the rich, liberals versus bigots, Maharashtrians split down the middle, minorities up in arms against the ruling dispensation, and various majority communities unsure and divided against each other.

In this scenario, how the vote goes is anybody's guess.

(Reliance Industries Ltd is the sole beneficiary of Independent Media Trust which controls Network18 Media & Investments Ltd)

Sujata Anandan is a senior journalist and author. Views are personal.

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