Our Funarena!

We’ve been liberally treated with political thrillers like that is happening in Maharashtra at the moment across the country since the last few years, thanks to the aggressive power-politics of the national ruling dispensation (BJP) which fittingly matches its aggressive Hindutva nationalism. However, the present game has been inevitable since the year 2019 when Shiv Sena (SS) parted ways with the BJP after jointly fighting and winning the assembly elections, and after a landslide victory for the alliance in 2014, on the CM post issue, and forming a coalition government Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi (Maharashtra Development Front or MVA) with the Congress and the nationalist Congress (NCP). For the last two and half years the state BJP has been a grumpy lot, alleging a great betrayal by the SS and wanting desperately to avenge it; in fact, they’d tried at least three times to derail the coalition so far. This last one, even though the party has continued to be in denial about any involvemen

Again, a shocker. Unbelievable news that came at the most unexpected moment. It has happened to us several times in the recent two years—persons quite close to us die and we come to know about them months later. This time the occasion was a nice gathering of a few senior citizens under their Senior Citizens Club in Thane, Mumbai. A member of the Shiv Sena who attended the event not as a senior citizen as he was much younger informed me to my casual inquiry about the famous Shiv Sena leader Anant Tare that he has passed away about a year back. I was taken aback and was too shocked to ask more questions. Instead, I came down to the nearby lane and telephoned Tare’s personal associate Sunil. And to my horror he confirmed the news that Anant Tare had indeed passed away on 22 nd February 2021 at a private hospital in Thane. He was hospitalized for some illness in December and before the day he was to be discharged he had a brain stroke and later a hemorrhage. As the doctors prepared for a

Not only on the front of fighting and containing the COVID-19 pandemic, but on every possible issue under the sun that the central government has been finding faults with the Maharashtra government with unfailing regularity since the Shiv Sena moved away from the winning combine with the BJP and formed a coalition government with the NCP and the Congress in 2019. Now, the clash is on a very dangerously suspenseful issue of containing the new COVID-19 variant, Omicron, and any political rivalry on this may lead to a situation where it is not at all clear who is going to have the last laugh; we better not call it the last laugh, because this is strictly not a laughing matter, if we still remember the catastrophe of the Second Wave that hit the country the hardest due to total neglect, complacency and lack of any kind of preparedness of the central government. Of course, at the moment the situation is much different than in late 2020 and early 2021 with rising vaccination figures and more

Even the end of Pitru Paksha fortnight which is considered inauspicious on 24 th September could not inspire the great politicians of Maharashtra to come together and be sincere to voters. They fought between themselves with greed for power being the driving force and things came to such a head that the raging anti-incumbency wave became a joke giving the earnest voters the biggest dilemma in their so-far-so-good democratic existence. Now, whoever they vote for would hardly decide who would finally form the government. In every constituency the voters will have at least five main candidates contesting (Congress, Nationalist Congress Party or NCP, Bharatiya Janata Party or BJP, Shiv Sena and Maharashtra Navnirman Sena or MNS and any of them could win in view of the split vote syndrome. There are still more political parties who could be big factors on specific areas.  As the fortnight of the Goddess Durga began things happened in a great hurry putting this poor writer in a

Normally in a democracy, India in particular, the numbers become all important after the results of elections are out. This in terms of one particular political party or alliance falling short of the majority number or in the extreme case of a hung verdict that requires desperate number measures. But for Maharashtra Assembly Elections-2014 the numbers have become all important even before a candidate of the major political parties happened to file a nomination. The numbers being rolled out, negotiated, debated and bargained are just not proving to be right for anyone.  While almost everybody has given the BJP-Shiv Sena (Mahayuti) alliance a green signal for its best ever chance to coming to power in Maharashtra the two parties have failed so far to arrive at the right seat sharing formula. The Shiv Sena has decided to fight not less than 150 seats of the 288-seat house and the BJP after its overwhelming success in the General Elections wants much more than the 119 seats i

Chief Election Commissioner VS Sampath The Election Commission of India (EC) on Friday, the 12 th of September 13, 2014, has announced the poll schedule for Maharashtra Assembly Elections. It is a single-phase polling on Wednesday, the 15 th October covering whole of Maharashtra including the Naxal affected Gadchiroli region. This means more than 80 million voters will exercise their democratic right in more than 90,000 polling booths spread across 288 constituencies of the state on a single day which reminds us of the single day polling done in the long past when the whole nation voted. With a gap of just 3 days the counting will be taken up on Sunday, the 19 th of October which is set to reveal if the opposition alliance of Mahayuti (BJP+Shiv Sena+others)   could finally end the 15-year-old rule of the Democratic Front (Congress+NCP). This will be the first major election for the new Modi Government formed on 26 th May, 2014 after BJP thundered to victory in the Lok Sa