Analysis | Maharashtra Cong. chief Patole’s jibes at allies put question mark over MVA alliance ahead of civic polls 

The Maharashtra Pradesh Congree Committee chief has hit out at ally Shiv Sena’s ‘opportunism’ while calling out the Nationalist Congress Party’s ‘consistent betrayal’ at the Udaipur ‘Chintan Shivir’

Maharashtra Congress chief Nana Patole’s renewed verbal assault against his Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) coalition allies, the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and the Shiv Sena, has put a question mark on the three parties contesting the critical Maharashtra civic polls together.

Mr. Patole stirred the pot of controversy soon after the Congress’s Chintan Shivir at Udaipur where, by his own admission, he submitted a litany of complaints to the party high command pertaining to the NCP’s consistent ‘betrayal’ of the Congress and its alleged efforts to undermine the party in Maharashtra.

The Maharashtra Pradesh Congress Chief (MPCC) chief then sternly rebuked Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray’s Shiv Sena for drawing up the three-ward system for the upcoming civic polls without allegedly consulting the Congress. Without directly naming either party, Mr. Patole censured the ‘opportunism’ of both the Sena and the Sharad Pawar-led NCP by hinting that the three-ward arrangement was calculatedly designed to benefit these parties in the high-stakes Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) election.

Excepting the State’s Vidarbha region and in Kolhapur district, where it has a strong presence, the Congress faces an existential crisis in Maharashtra, particularly in Mumbai and Pune.

According to analysts, the party needs to expand its presence in the civic bodies of the cash-rich municipal corporations of Mumbai, Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad if it has to rebuild its moribund organisational structures and regain lost ground in Maharashtra.

“The Congress has lost its grip on Pune since Suresh Kalmadi’s drift into political oblivion. It is unlikely to have much scope for expansion in Pune or Mumbai if it contest the civic polls in alliance with the NCP and the Sena as both would be unwilling to share too many seats with them. The question is whether Mr. Patole will break away from the MVA given that the chances of the Congress winning in a three-ward system are extremely slim,” observes city-based political analyst Rajendra Pandharpure.  

This is not the first time that Mr. Patole, with his blunt talk, has stirred discord within the tripartite MVA coalition led by Mr. Thackeray. Last year, he issued a ‘Congress will go it alone’ refrain for future polls, triggering unease among the MVA besides giving headaches to senior leaders within his party like Balasaheb Thorat and Ashok Chavan, who eagerly sought to placate Mr. Pawar, considered the ‘architect’ of this unlikely coalition.