MNS on the brink: Party faces loss of iconic symbol after election rout

Uddhav Thackeray, president, Shiv Sena (UBT). Pic/Ashish Raje; (right) Raj Thackeray, MNS chief. Pic/Kirti Surve Parade

With the Mahayuti comfortably crossing the halfway mark, Uddhav and Raj Thackeray now face significant challenges ahead of the crucial Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) elections. The Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) faces an existential crisis with the threat of losing its electoral symbol looming while the Uddhav Sena, whose fortunes have declined, has to retain its cadre, which will now slowly move towards the Shinde Sena.

In total, the Sena (UBT) won 10 seats in Mumbai, four in Vidarbha, three in Marathwada, two in Western Maharashtra and only one in Konkan, and Uddhav now needs to ensure that his party leaders and cadre do not switch over to Shinde camp, which won 57 out of the 85 seats it contested in the state.

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The MNS, which won none of the 125 seats it contested in the Assembly election, faces the threat of losing its railway engine electoral symbol as the party struggles to meet the Election Commission's basic recognition criteria of six per cent of valid votes in four or more states in elections to the Lok Sabha or state Assemblies and four MPs in the Lok Sabha.

The party's sole sitting MLA Pramod (Raju) Patil from Kalyan Rural lost to Shinde Sena's Rajesh More by 66,396 votes. Even the debut of the MNS chief's son Amit Thackeray was a failure with the youth coming third in Mahim, where he was fighting against MLA Sada Sarvankar of the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena and Shinde Sena's Mahesh Sawant. Sawant won by a margin of 1,316 votes, garnering 50,213 votes.

In its first Maharashtra Assembly election in 2009, the MNS contested 143 seats, winning 13. In 2014 and 2019, it contested 219 and 101 seats respectively, winning just one in each poll. The party's vote share declined from 5.71 per cent in 2009 to 3.15 per cent in 2014 to 2.25 per cent in 2019 to 1.55 per cent at present.

‘Huge setbacks'

Political analyst Sanjay Patil said. "The election results have thrown a big challenge to Raj and Uddhav Thackeray. This will be a huge setback for the MNS and Raj Thackeray but more so for Amit Thackeray, who lost his debut election by coming third. Launching Amit without doing much preparation or groundwork was a mistake and this first political loss will remain in the records forever."

He added, "As far as Uddhav is concerned, he had always been saying that he only believed in the court of the janata [people]. But with the people having rejected him wholeheartedly, he now needs to introspect.

Always playing the victim card does not help. People do not like it. He needs to build his party and cadre and work on it. People can identify with Eknath Shinde's ground-level politics, which had always been the style of the Shiv Sena. Most importantly, all this will now affect both Thackerays in the upcoming municipal and local body elections. The BMC elections will be a tough walk for the Thackerays and their Senas. It will prove to be a very big challenge."

20
No. of Assembly seats won by Sena (UBT)