Will BJP’s attempt to shift Maharashtra battle to Narendra Modi Vs Rahul Gandhi help party?

Earlier this month on April 5, Maharashtra deputy chief minister Devendra Fadnavis was in Indapur, an assembly segment under Baramati parliamentary seat, to campaign for Mahayuti candidate Sunetra Pawar.

Although Sunetra, nominee of Nationalist Congress Party (NCP Ajit Pawar faction), has been locked in a close fight against Supriya Sule from NCP (SCP), Fadnavis pitched the battle as Narendra Modi versus Rahul Gandhi.

“This election is not between Sunetra Pawa and Supriya Sule or Sharad Pawar and Ajit Pawar. This election is about Narendra Modi versus Rahul Gandhi in which your vote to Sunetra Pawar will go to Modi who will become the Prime Minister,” Fadnavis said.

Last week Fadnavis repeated the same message as he spoke in a public rally addressed by the Prime Minister at Kolhapur.

On Sunday, at another rally in Osmanabad, Fadnavis stressed that the battle there isn’t between the two candidates – Archana Patil of NCP, which is part of Mahayuti, and Omraje Nimbalkar of Shiv Sena (UBT), an ally of rival Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA). He then went on repeating the same Modi versus Rahul message.

Fadnavis’s message is also being echoed by others within his own party and leaders of alliance partners such as Eknath Shinde and Ajit Pawar, who have been telling voters not to fall for emotional pitch.

Be it Baramati, Kolhapur, Osmanabad, or constituencies like Madha, Solapur and Pune, the BJP is attempting to shape a narrative that the local clashes aren’t local but the battle is between Narendra Modi and Rahul Gandhi.

The BJP’s objective is clearly to make it a Modi versus Rahul confrontation, even though the Congress has repeatedly said that it was not in contention for the position of Prime Minister.

In a way, the party is trying to ensure that voters don’t get trapped in the counter-narrative being formed by the opposition that battle between two candidates representing two NCPs isn’t a clash between Sharad Pawar and Ajit Pawar or a contest about nominees.

This is starker especially where battles are close and Mahayuti is forced to make extra efforts to elect its nominees. As the elections come less than a year after NCP witnessed a split and more than two years after Shiv Sena was divided, its leaders including 83-year-old Sharad Pawar and Uddhav Thackeray have been trying to keep it afresh in the minds of voters and convey strongly to electorate how BJP engineered the schism.

On the ground, the message of the two leaders and their colleagues also seems to be resonating well. At one such public meeting in Pirangut near Pune as a part of the Baramati constituency, when Aditya Thackeray recounted how BJP split the two parties and targeted his and Supriya Sule’s father, the atmosphere became charged while the response from the audience became aggressive.

At the same time, MVA has this time fielded strong candidates at some places from Western Maharashtra and Marathwada, who have put a formidable challenge in front of Mahayuti nominees. In such circumstances, pitching a battle between two nominees can be riskier.

For the BJP, the advantage lies in turning the campaign around Modi, whose record in the past 10 years and his image of being a strong leader is easy to sell to voters as against Rahul Gandhi.

In 2014 and 2019, Modi’s message resonated well in Maharashtra compared to Rahul Gandhi even as the latter was projected as the party’s contender for the top post. As a result, BJP won 23 seats in both previous polls while its ally – undivided Shiv Sena – won 18 as against one seat by Congress in 2019 and two in 2014. The party was successful in winning many seats when the battle was pitted between two national leaders.

This time with a week left for the third phase of elections in which 11 crucial seats are going to polls in the state, BJP’s attempts to pitch a battle between Modi versus Rahul haven’t been as effective as Pawar senior and Uddhav Thackeray’s message of “betrayal”. However, one week is too long in politics and with Modi’s multiple rallies scheduled this week, it can certainly help BJP to change the atmosphere.