On Monday, Maratha quota activist Manoj Jarange-Patil announced that he would not back any candidate in the upcoming Maharashtra Assembly elections, adding that his supporters were free to vote for any party they wanted to. There was, however, a crucial caveat, as Jarange-Patil urged Maratha voters to apply the “Lok Sabha formula”. If effective, this would end up hurting the Bharatiya Janata Party.
In the Lok Sabha polls, Maharashtra’s ruling Mahayuti alliance lost seven of the eight Lok Sabha seats it contested in the state’s Marathwada region, including all four where the BJP put up candidates. This was largely an impact of the Maratha quota agitation led by Jarange-Patil. So, the intention of his instruction on Monday was clear even as he did not explicitly voice it.
The Mahayuti alliance consists of the BJP, the Eknath Shinde faction of the Shiv Sena and the Ajit Pawar faction of the Nationalist Congress Party.
Since Jarange-Patil started his agitation in August last year, calling for reservation for Marathas under the Other Backward Classes quota, he has repeatedly targeted the BJP for failing to meet the demand. On Monday, he said he would not endorse anyone, less than a day after he pledged support for 25 candidates, belonging to neither the ruling or Opposition alliance.
After the announcement, leaders from both the Mahayuti alliance and the Opposition’s Maha Vikas Aghadi bloc welcomed Jarange-Patil’s move, claiming it would benefit them.
The major parties in the Opposition bloc are the Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray), Nationalist Congress Party (Sharadchandra Pawar) and the Congress.
However, observers of Maharashtra politics told Scroll that the development was more likely to help the Opposition, primarily because if Jarange-Patil had fielded candidates in the fray, that could have led to a split in the anti-BJP Maratha votes.
Why did Jarange-Patil back out?
The demand for a Maratha quota is not new. It has been made repeatedly since the early 1980s. When Jarange-Patil emerged on the scene last year, he gave the demand a fresh lease of life. His aggressive posturing and frequent hunger strikes attracted wide support from the community as well as media attention, political watchers told Scroll.
More than a year down the line, even as the demand continues to resonate among Jarange-Patil’s supporters, his belligerence and the media frenzy around him has fizzled out to a large extent, said Manoj Khandekar, a Mumbai-based journalist at Marathi daily Lokmat.
“Contesting elections is a different ball game,” Khandekar said. “When you do not have a party structure, you need backing from the media to stay in the news cycle. That is no longer the case with Jarange-Patil. You would not see as many news reports about him as there used to be last year or even during the Lok Sabha elections.”
Sanjay Patil, a political science researcher in Mumbai, told Scroll that even among his supporters there was some discontent with Jarange-Patil’s “knee-jerk, ad-hoc style of decision making”. It was possible that the activist did not get the backing he expected from his supporters after announcing that he would field candidates.
“A poor performance in the elections would have robbed him of the clout he still holds and he would be seen as a spent force,” Patil explained.
Both observers also said that Chief Minister Eknath Shinde, who belongs to the Maratha community too, might also have a role to play in Jarange-Patil’s U-turn. “Despite Shinde being the head of the government against which he is agitating, Jarange-Patil never criticises him,” Sanjay Patil said. “His target has always been the BJP and [Deputy Chief Minister] Devendra Fadnavis.”
Khandekar highlighted that this distinction in Jarange-Patil’s politics played out in Lok Sabha polls too. The Shinde faction of Shiv Sena managed to win the only seat it contested in the Marathwada region even as its partners in the Mahayuti alliance were routed. Khandekar added that Shinde realises that keeping the BJP in check is crucial to ward off threats to his position as the chief minister. “There is speculation that Shinde might have convinced Jarange-Patil to back off as his being in the fray would have benefited the BJP,” Khandekar told Scroll.
Why would have Jarange-Patil contesting helped the BJP?
The answer to this question lies in the fact that even ahead of the Lok Sabha polls, Jarange-Patil did not explicitly ask the Marathas to vote for any particular party, but he urged his supporters to defeat those who are against reservation for the community. Since the results made it clear whom the Marathas view as against reservation, Jarange Patil’s call to apply the “Lok Sabha formula” again would cause concerns for the ruling alliance, political observers noted.
Harish Wankhede, a professor of political science at the Jawaharlal Nehru University told Scroll that Jarange-Patil backing candidates in the Assembly elections could have led to a division of Maratha votes. “In the Lok Sabha elections, the BJP was the biggest loser due to consolidation of Marathas, so now it would have been the biggest beneficiary had Jarange-Patil backed some independent candidates.”
Wankhede said that Jarange-Patil’s electoral hopes were pinned on the “MMD formula” – a consolidation of Maratha, Muslim and Dalit voters, which was a major factor in the Maha Vikas Aghadi winning 31 of the 40 Lok Sabha seats in Maharashtra. The three communities together form nearly 58% of Maharashtra's population, with Marathas accounting for about 33%.
“In a close contest like in Maharashtra, any division of votes in this bloc would have hampered the Opposition’s chances,” Wankhede said.
Khandekar said that Jarange-Patil’s decision to back out could also hurt the BJP’s ploy to win seats by pitting candidates belonging to OBC groups against Maratha candidates of the Maha Vikas Aghadi. The OBCs are opposed to Marathas getting quota benefits, as that could pose a threat to their share of the reservation pie. The BJP has been looking to exploit this faultline by wooing the OBCs.
“On several seats which have Maratha influence, the BJP has fielded OBC candidates to consolidate all OBC groups against Marathas,” Khandekar said. “A division of Maratha votes on these seats would have helped the BJP.”
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