'Modi Was Not A Factor In Maharashtra'

'Money power was deployed like an army in a war.'
'None of the MVA parties had that kind of money.'

IMAGE: Narendra Modi at a Mahayuti rally for the Maharashtra assembly election at Shivaji Park in Mumbai, November 14, 2024. Photograph: Sahil Salvi

"Let us not underestimate the power of money, which was officially and unofficially handed over to voters in various constituencies," journalist and former Congress Rajya Sabha MP Kumar Ketkar, tells Prasanna D Zore/Rediff.com in the first of a two-part interview about the Maharashtra assembly election.

In your Rediff.com interview soon after the MVA's unexpected performance in the 2024 Lok Sabha election, you had clearly mentioned that the MVA'S victory shouldn't be extrapolated as a sure shot assembly win. And that is what exactly happened.
What did the MVA do to suffer such an utter rout?

Instead of discussing who is wrong and who is right and what mistakes the MVA committed, let us not first underestimate the very aggressive use of official and unofficial money power by the Mahayuti, particularly by the BJP and (Eknath) Shinde that was put to use. The whole money power was deployed like an army in a war.

None of the MVA parties had that kind of money or infrastructural support of finance. Lack of monetary resources was the MVA's biggest weakness.

In my 50 years of journalism, and I have covered elections from 1971 onwards, I have not seen such obscene and vulgar display of money power.

Having said that, let us not also underestimate the mistakes committed by the MVA. Like, for instance, the MVA did not really challenge the system of electronic voting machines (EVMs, after doubts were raised after the Lok Sabha election about manipulation of these voting machines). They should have challenged that.

Their entire protest actions were limited to issues like price rise, unemployment, etc. But their basic fight should have been against institutional capture.

The Election Commission and judiciary defined the Mahayuti government in Maharashtra.

They said that though there is a new party (Eknath Shinde's Sena), it need not have a new name. So they used the same name (Shiv Sena). They (Shinde Sena) were allowed to use the same symbol (bow and arrow as the parent Shiv Sena).

Similarly, Ajit Pawar, after the split in the NCP, enjoyed the original symbol and name.

In both cases (of the split in the NCP and Shiv Sena) the original party was asked to change their symbols. This is outrageous.

Are you saying that this had an impact on the way the Maharashtra assembly election results have come about?

Now what happens is people are used to those symbols for the last 25 years. Naturally, when a voter goes there (to the EVM), her first reaction, reflex action, is to vote according to what she is familiar with. So many votes must have been cast (in favour of the NCP's symbol 'clock' now belonging to Ajit Pawar and the Shiv Sena's 'bow and arrow' that now belongs to Eknath Shinde instead of Sharad Pawar's NCP and Uddhav Thackeray's Shiv Sena).

In my family, two people asked me who (which election symbol) should they vote for, because they didn't know (the candidates and their parties). I had to tell them to disclose to me who they wanted to vote for and accordingly I would have told them about the symbol. Now if this is the confusion in an educated family like ours, this confusion must be quite large enough.

The counter argument to what you said could be that the same voters voted on the same symbols during the Lok Sabha and assembly elections.
While these voters led to the MVA winning 31 out of the 48 Lok Sabha seats in Maharashtra on the NCP (SP) and SS (UBT)'s new symbols, the same voters helped the Mahayuti bag 230-plus assembly constituencies on the 'bow and arrow' and 'clock' symbol. How do you see that?

Absolutely correct question. But the important point is an average Lok Sabha constituency has about 25 lakh to 30 lakh (people, not voters). An average assembly constituency has anywhere between 2.5 lakh and 4 lakh people. Naturally, in an assembly election the importance of the symbol and the candidate and the party is at least 10 times more important than in the Lok Sabha election.

IMAGE: Maha Vikas Aghadi leaders Dr Varsha Eknath Gaikwad, Uddhav Thackeray, Rahul Gandhi, Mallikarjun Kharge, Sharad Pawar, Balasaheb Thorat and Ramesh Chennithala at an election meeting in Mumbai. Photograph: Sahil Salvi

That does not mean your question is invalid. But that (number of people in Lok Sabha and assembly constituencies) makes a big difference because in a Lok Sabha election you need not know the candidate. You are voting for something distant.

Moreover, in the Lok Sabha election, the issue was whether you are pro-Modi or anti-Modi and not pro-BJP or anti-BJP.

In the Maharashtra election, Modi was not a factor at all. The only factor was what was the Mahayuti doing. And what did the Mahayuti do?

The kind of largesse that were offered to people like the Laadki Bahin Yojana and many other schemes in which cash was transferred was unprecedented. It was official distribution of cash to a particular segment of voters, women.

Now those women, who never had their own bank accounts -- at least 50 per cent of them never perhaps had an account -- were all dependent on their husbands and the male chauvinistic system. Suddenly they got this financial independence. That is an important factor for women to get impressed by and women were impressed by this particular scheme.

The Laadki Bahin scheme definitely influenced voters. Such a scheme did not exist at the time of the Lok Sabha election.

Why did women voters not heed the MVA election manifesto that promised them Rs 3,000 and free bus travel?

That is a promise, which would materialise only after they came to power, and if they came to power. Whereas this (by the Mahayuti government) is money given -- Rs 7,500 were actually given (between August and November 2024 as part of this scheme).

These moneys were in their (the beneficiary women) hand when they came to vote. What is in hand is far more important, far pricier, than an election-time promise.

Whoever gives you money immediately is important. Let us not underestimate the power of money, which was officially and unofficially handed over to voters in various constituencies.

The actual price of a voter was anywhere between Rs 1,000 and Rs 5,000 in many, many, constituencies. I know because voters have told me. As a reporter, I still keep moving about.

Monetary power, official as well as unofficial, was unprecedented. That is one reason why that (the Maharashtra election outcome) cannot be therefore compared with that of the Lok Sabha.

In the Lok Sabha no largesse like this could be offered, which directly went into personal bank accounts.