Series of meetings between Raj Thackeray and top Maharashtra BJP brass reignites talk of BJP-MNS alliance

State BJP President Chandrashekhar Bawankule meeting with MNS chief followed by those of BJP leaders Devendra Fadnavis and Vinod Tawde; “alliance questions are decided at national level,” says Bawankule.

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Mumbai: A series of meetings between Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) chief Raj Thackeray and top Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders in a matter of few days in Maharashtra, has sparked widespread speculation of a possible alliance between the BJP and the MNS ahead of the crucial Brihanmumbai Corporation (BMC) elections.

On Tuesday, Maharashtra BJP president Chandrashekhar Bawankule met with the MNS chief at Raj Thackeray’s residence ‘Shivtirth’. Describing his meeting with the MNS chief as a “courtesy call”, Chandrashekhar Bawankule said there was no need to read a political subtext into it.

Earlier on Saturday, Raj Thackeray had met with Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister and BJP leader Devendra Fadnavis at the latter’s ‘Sagar’ bungalow in Mumbai. This was his second meeting with Devendra Fadnavis in less than a month. This was immediately followed by another meeting between BJP national general secretary Vinod Tawde and Raj Thackeray on Monday that set the rumour mills rolling.

When asked to comment on the possibility of BJP and MNS coming together for the upcoming civic polls, Chandrashekhar Bawankule remarked, “The decision to ally with a party is taken by our party brass at the national level. This is a courtesy call, there is no need to read any political meaning into it… Raj Thackeray has always stood by ‘Hindutva’ ideals, hence I wanted to meet him after my appointment as the state BJP President.”

Chandrashekhar Bawankule further said that as the state BJP President, his task was to expand the party in Maharashtra while it was up to the senior leadership (in New Delhi) to decide upon questions of alliances.

The newly formed Shiv Sena (Chief Minister Eknath Shinde led Sena faction)- BJP government is straining every sinew to wrest control of the cash-rich Mumbai civic body, the BMC – said to be one of Asia’s richest civic bodies – form the Uddhav Thackeray-led Sena faction political grasp.

Prior to Chief Minister Eknath Shinde’s revolt which vertically split the Shiv Sena, the party has retained its grip on the BMC for more than two decades now.

To this end, the BJP and the Shinde faction feel that if they can secure an alliance with the MNS, then they could snap-up a large portion of the core Marathi-speaking vote-bank in Mumbai city and undercut the Uddhav Thackeray faction. According to sources, a number of leaders within the Shinde-led Sena and the BJP were eager for an alliance with the MNS.

Following its rout in the 2019 Maharashtra Assembly election and its general decline in the state’s politics, the MNS had changed its ideological direction by veering towards ‘Hindutva’ politics, signalled by Raj Thackeray’s adoption of a saffron flag incorporating Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj’s royal seal or ‘Rajmudra’ in 2020.

Since then, Raj Thackeray’s party has inched ever closer to the BJP in an attempt on the MNS’s part to seize the ‘Hindutva’ space from the Shiv Sena faction led by his estranged cousin brother and former chief minister Uddhav Thackeray.

The BJP, on the other hand, hopes to make use of Raj Thackeray’s still pockets of support bases in the Mumbai, Thane, Pune and Nashik civic bodies.

Despite the MNS having just one MLA in the 288-seat Maharashtra legislature, the party has openly backed the BJP in the recently concluded Rajya Sabha and Maharashtra Legislative Council elections, as well as in the election to the Speaker’s post in the Legislative Assembly.

In his speech on the occasion of the Marathi New Year (‘Gudi Padwa’) in April this year, Raj Thackeray, continuing with his hard ‘Hindutva’ line, had caused a furore by demanding that the erstwhile Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government to dismantle loudspeakers before mosques.