The party making INDIA bloc's Maharashtra seat sharing extremely tricky

Prakash Ambedkar is among the only RPI leaders in the state with some sizeable following and has astute political understanding.

There’s an elephant in the room, and the Maha Aghadi of the Congress, Uddhav Thackeray’s Shiv Sena and Sharad Pawar’s NCP – all part of the INDIA bloc – seems to be grappling with it. What do you do with the Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi (VBA), an outfit that could unfavourably alter the outcome and damage the MVA in several of the state’s 48 Lok Sabha constituencies?

Marred by mistrust and distrust from both the sides, the Maha-Aghadi and the VBA are locked in a blow-hot blow-cold public posturing trying to navigate a tough road ahead where the two players seem not to unruffle each other, but also not give in to each other’s tantrums.

The onus of roping in the VBA seems more on the Maha-Aghadi, especially the Congress, even though the Lok Sabha elections could be a test of an ideological position for the former.

To Ally With VBA Or Not

While the Eknath Shinde-led Maha-Yuti – with BJP as its centrepiece – is confronted with the Maratha reservation imbroglio, the Maha-Aghadi hasn’t been able to resolve the dilemma around inducting the VBA into its fold, given the complexity shrouding the seat-sharing arrangement.

Former MP and Dr BR Ambedkar’s grandson, Prakash Ambedkar, who leads the VBA, has been holding massive rallies all over the state in an explicit display of its following, and making overtures to the INDIA bloc to accommodate it with a “reasonable share of seats”.

“Bhik nako, hakka hawa” is their slogan, which means “we don’t want doles, but our right.” The VBA has been positioning itself as a platform that champions the cause of the economically and socially extremely backward classes and castes – including the broad rubric of Dalits. Which in electoral terms means that if it contests independently, it would hurt the Maha-Aghadi more than Maha-Yuti.

How many seats? And which ones? These are the two questions at the heart of the reluctance on part of the Maha-Aghadi apparently leading to the delay in taking a decision over the VBA.

Earlier this month, Congress sent an invite to Ambedkar and his party to join the Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra led by Rahul Gandhi. Ambedkar politely wrote back saying let the VBA first be invited to join the INDIA bloc as a member of the Maha-Aghadi in Maharashtra.

Last week, the Congress general secretary in-charge of Maharashtra told a news conference in Pune that both Uddhav Thackeray and Sharad Pawar are in talks with VBA. The VBA quickly denied that and wondered if the Congress had outsourced its political interests to other parties.

The thaw came late – two days ago, with both sides agreeing to finally meet formally on January 30 at a meeting of the Maha-Aghadi allies in Mumbai which Ambedkar has accepted to join.

Maharashtra with 48 Lok Sabha seats is a critical state for BJP. It won 43 of them along with the Shiv Sena, now a party split into two factions, with chief minister Eknath Shinde walking away with a majority of its MLAs and MPs. Any decline in that number hurts BJP nationally.

In a crowded political space since the splits in the Sena and the NCP, Maharashtra seems to be headed for a cliffhanger with two major alliances stacked against each other.

Against this backdrop, every single percentage of vote share could weigh heavily on the outcome.

Ambedkar’s 2019 Show Of Strength

For the Maha-Aghadi, the VBA matters, but the Congress and the NCP have long-harboured a distrust in Ambedkar, dating back to the times when he headed the Bharatiya Republic Paksha-Bahujan Mahasangh, or the Bharip-BMS, one of the many splinters of the erstwhile RPI.

When the Bharip-BMS bombed in the 2000s and lost its lustre, Ambedkar converted into a big new dispensation and christened it as the VBA just ahead of the 2014 state legislature elections blending smaller, neglected social groups and Dalits, especially the neo-Buddhists or Mahars.

It’s not in question that Prakash Ambedkar is among the only RPI leaders in the state with some sizeable following and has astute political understanding to bargain for his space, a reason why NCP and Congress both have been dilly-dallying in their dealings with him.

VBA claims to further the reformist social-political lineage of the country, an anti-Vedic cultural tradition rooted in the critical reformist traditions stemming from the life and life works of Mahatma Phule to Dr BR Ambedkar. The party has scattered pockets across Maharashtra with a sizeable following and therefore notable electoral influence, especially with the waning of the erstwhile Republican Party of India and its over two dozen factions, and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), which until the last decade commanded nearly seven percent of the vote-share in the state.

Electorally, VBA’s spread and scope dents Congress and NCP more than BJP or Sena, given that it attracts the social classes that once sided with the Congress.

VBA fielded Lok Sabha candidates for the first time in the 2019 general elections, in alliance with  AIMIM. It had initially sought an alliance with Congress and demanded 12 Lok Sabha seats and pressed Congress to include in its manifesto a key VBA demand: that the RSS be brought under the purview of the Indian Constitution. After the VBA-AIMIM alliance fielded candidates in all 48 seats, VBA had alone polled over 3.7 million, or over 6 percent of the votes in Maharashtra, and dented Congress and NCP candidates in several seats.

Together with AIMIM, that share was over 7 percent of the votes cast. AIMIM won the Aurangabad seat. The Congress-NCP alliance did not accommodate the VBA then mainly because it had a truck with Asaduddin Owaisi’s AIMIM, while the demand for 12 seats was rejected as unreasonable. In the subsequent assembly elections in 2019, VBA polled about 5 percent votes, but it dented the Congress and the NCP in over two dozen constituencies dominated by Dalits and lower OBCs.

The 2024 Scenario

This time around, Ambedkar hasn’t made any truck with AIMIM and has been explicit in saying it wants to join the INDIA bloc but wants a reasonable share of seats to contest.

Congress and NCP will probably offer three seats at the most to the VBA. Which ones? There’s still no agreement on that. Solapur, maybe. Shirdi, yes. And Akola, in Vidarbha, which Ambedkar has represented in the Lok Sabha before. Yet, what VBA would bring to the Maha-Aghadi is the vote of a scattered extreme backward castes and caste Dalits and neo-Buddhists, ideologically staunchly opposed to BJP and RSS and therefore the Maha-yuti.

While that is true, it’s also a compulsion for VBA to hold on to the Maha-Aghadi alliance since 2024 would be a bitterly contested and highly polarised elections – between the pro and anti-Modi baiters.

The dilemma for both Maha-Aghadi and VBA is real: There aren’t many seats that the MVA could offer to VBA, but if you don’t take it on board, VBA can dent the Maha-Aghadi big time. On the other hand, VBA itself would stand to gain nothing going alone.

Punctuated by the animosities emerging out of the BJP’s machinations to split the two regional parties in the state, Shiv Sena and NCP, the electoral outcomes are unpredictable despite the cacophony and the brouhaha generated by the January 22 Ram Temple inauguration.

While Maharashtra’s political pot – with several parties owing allegiance to Hindutva and several others ascribing to secular liberal democratic ideals – is pregnant with uncertainties, the small but important formations like VBA could quietly alter the electoral outcomes.

Jaideep Hardikar is a Nagpur-based journalist, a Roving Reporter with the People's Archive of Rural India, and the author of "Ramrao - The story of India's farm crisis". Views are personal, and do not represent the stand of this publication.