MUMBAI: The resistance within the Congress to joining hands with the Thackeray cousins for the BMC polls is growing more strident. In the latest instance, former Mumbai Congress president Bhai Jagtap declared that the party should contest the polls alone not only in Mumbai but in other cities as well.
“We should go solo,” he said. “This is not my stand alone. Several others are of the same opinion, and this was conveyed during the political affairs committee meeting of the party on October 13. This is because these are local body polls, which are meant for grassroots workers. They should get an opportunity to contest, and so we should not have an alliance with Uddhav Thackeray, let alone Raj Thackeray.”
A senior Congress leader corroborated that most of the party’s senior city leaders, including Arif Naseem Khan, Amin Patel, Aslam Shaikh, Chandrakant Handore, Jyoti Gaikwad and Sachin Sawant, had voiced their opposition to an alliance with the Thackerays during the meeting. The leaders cited several reasons for this. “The Shiv Sena (UBT) leadership has not yet spoken with the Congress despite coming close to striking a deal with the MNS,” revealed a senior leader. “Having the MNS in the alliance would mean damaging our core voter base, as their ideology is the opposite of ours. Moreover, the Sena (UBT) also took away crucial seats of the Congress in the last election’s seat-sharing deal.”
Mumbai Congress president Varsha Gaikwad responded cautiously to the statement, as the Congress is part of the Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi (MVA) coalition. “Congress workers do believe that the party’s stand should be different in the BMC polls,” she said. “This was expressed in the political affairs committee meeting as well as the executive committee meetings. However, the party leadership takes the final decision on any alliance. We will inform them of the party workers’ views, and they will decide.”
The Congress has been uneasy ever since Uddhav Thackeray started demonstrating interest in taking the MNS along with him for the upcoming local body polls in an attempt to consolidate Marathi votes.
If the Congress chooses to go solo in the BMC elections, this will not be the first time for it. In 2017, the party chose not to ally with the then undivided NCP and could only win 31 of 227 seats. It was a drop of 21 seats for the party, which had won 52 seats in the 2012 polls.
The Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena (UBT) tried to downplay Jagtap’s views. “Bhai Jagtap said that the Congress has yet to decide if it wants to join hands even with its coalition ally, the Sena (UBT), and hence discussing an alliance with Raj Thackeray is remote,” said former mayor Kishori Pednekar. “What he has said is true. Moreover, there is no point in creating pointless differences, as most political parties have been contesting the polls independently since 2009.”