Politics of Maharashtra

The politics of Maharashtra, India's second most populous state, are conducted within a framework of parliamentary government, with a bicameral legislature consisting of the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly and the Maharashtra Legislative Council. The Legislative Assembly (Vidhan Sabha) is the lower chamber and consists of 288 members who are elected for five-year terms.[1] The Legislative Council (Vidhan Parishad) is the upper chamber and is a permanent body of 78 members. The government of Maharashtra is headed by the Chief Minister, who is chosen by the party or alliance with a majority of members in the Legislative Assembly. The Chief Minister, along with the council of ministers, drives the legislative agenda and exercises most of the executive powers.[2] However, the constitutional and formal head of the state is the Governor, who is appointed for a five-year term by the President of India on the advice of the Union government.[3]

Maharashtra also elects members to both chambers of the Indian Parliament. Representatives to India's lower chamber, the Lok Sabha, are elected directly in national elections, while representatives to the upper chamber, the Rajya Sabha, are elected indirectly by the Vidhan Sabha. There are three further levels of government below the state: districts, Taluka (sub-divisions), and Gram panchayat (village parish councils). Cities and towns have their own separate governments. There are 36 districts in Maharashtra, which are typically grouped into six divisions, though there are no division-level governments.

The politics of Maharashtra since its inception in 1960 and also of predecessor states such as Bombay has been dominated by the Indian National Congress party. Maharashtra became a bastion of the Congress party producing stalwarts such as Yashwantrao Chavan, Vasantdada Patil, Vasantrao Naik and Shankarrao Chavan. Sharad Pawar has been a towering personality in the state and National politics for over thirty years. During his career, he has split the Congress twice with significant consequences for the state politics.[4][5] The Congress party enjoyed a near unchallenged dominance of the political landscape until 1995 when the Shiv Sena and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) secured an overwhelming majority in the state to form a coalition government.[6] After his second parting from the Congress party in 1999, Sharad Pawar formed the NCP but formed a coalition with the Congress to keep the BJP-Shiv Sena alliance out of the government until September 2014. Prithviraj Chavan of the Congress party was the last Chief Minister of Maharashtra under the Congress-NCP alliance that ruled until 2014.[7][8][9] For the 2014 assembly polls, the two alliances between the NCP and Congress and between the BJP and Shiv Sena respectively broke down over seat allocations. In the election, the largest number of seats went to the Bharatiya Janata Party, with 122 seats. The BJP initially formed a minority government under Devendra Fadnavis but Shiv Sena has, as of December 2014, entered the Government and therefore the Government now enjoys a comfortable majority in the Maharashtra Vidhansabha.[10]

A period of coalition governments began in 1995 with the victory of Shiv Sena and the BJP. Shiv Sena was the larger party in the coalition. From 1999 until 2014, the NCP and INC formed one coalition while Shiv Sena and the BJP formed another for three successive elections, which the INC-NCP alliance won. A split emerged within Shiv Sena between Uddhav Thackeray and his paternal cousin Raj Thackeray in 2006, at which point which the latter left the party and formed a new Maharashtrian party, Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS). Raj Thackeray has also tried to win votes from the Marathi Manoos and, like his uncle Sri Balashaheb Thackeray (Bal Thackeray) who founded Shiv Sena, has rallied support around anti-immigrant sentiment in Maharahstra, for instance against Biharis.

Dominant groups in Maharashtra politics

The state of Maharashtra was formed on 1 May 1960, and since then its politics have been evolving. The INC was long without a major challenger, and enjoyed overwhelming support from the influential state's sugar co-operatives and thousands of other cooperative organizations involved in the rural agricultural economy of the state such as marketing of dairy and vegetable produce, credit unions etc. For better part of the late colonial and early post independence, in Bombay state and its successor Maharashtra state, the politics of the state has been dominated by the mainly rural Maratha-Kunbi caste. This group dominates the cooperative institutions and with the resultant economic power, control politics from the village level up to the Assembly and Lok Sabha seats. Since 1980s, this group has also been active in setting up private educational institutions.[11] Major past political figures of Congress party from Maharashtra such as Keshavrao Jedhe, Yashwantrao Chavan, and Shankarrao Chavan and Vilasrao Deshmukh have been from this group. Sharad Pawar, who had been a towering figure in Maharashtrian and national politics belongs to this group. The state's political status quo was upset when Sharad Pawar defected from the INC, which was perceived as the vehicle of the Gandhi dynasty, to form the Nationalist Congress Party. This followed disputes between Pawar and the INC president Sonia Gandhi. This offshoot of the Congress party is nevertheless dominated by the Maratha community. In the last thirty years, however, Shiv Sena and the BJP began gaining a foothold in the state of Maharashtra, especially in the urban areas such as Mumbai. The Shiv Sena was formed by Balashaheb Thackerey, a cartoonist and journalist, to advocate and agitate for the interests of Maharashtrians in Mumbai. Shiv Sena and the BJP came into the power in 1995, which was a big blow to the INC. After one term, however, the Congress-NCP alliance regained power and held it until 2014.

2014 Assembly Election

The 2014 election was highly significant as it followed important new developments. All the major parties, including the INC, the NCP, Shiv Sena, the BJP, and the MNS entered the election with all guns blazing to show their power in the assembly elections. The BJP was buoyed by their landslide national victory in the 2014 Lok Sabha election, which brought the iconic Narendra Modi to power as prime minister. Shiv Sena and the BJP entered a war of words, as did Congress and the NCP, leading to a complex and much-contested election. The results were highly significant in that the BJP received the highest number of seats despite being historically smaller than Shiv Sena in the state. Although the BJP still required Shiv Sena's support to form a majority, it progressed from a minor party in state politics to the party of the chief minister.

See also

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Politics of Maharashtra.

References

  1. ↑ "Legislative assembly Maharashtra". Congress. Maharashtra Congress. Retrieved 19 January 2014.
  2. ↑ "CM Selection". Election Commission. Election Commission of India. Retrieved 19 January 2014.
  3. ↑ "The Council of Ministers". Government of J & K. J & K Raj Bhavan. Retrieved 19 January 2014.
  4. ↑ Wilkinson, Steven (January 2005). "Elections in India: Behind the Congress Comeback". Journal of Democracy. 16 (1): 153–167. doi:10.1353/jod.2005.0018.
  5. ↑ Kamat, AR (October 1980). "Politico-economic developments in Maharashtra: a review of the post-independence period , - JSTOR". Economic and Political Weekly. 15 (40): 1669. doi:10.2307/4369147.
  6. ↑ Palshikar,, S; Birmal, N (18 December 2004). "Maharashtra: Towards a New Party System". Economic and Political Weekly. 39 (51): 5467. doi:10.2307/4415934.
  7. ↑ "Clean yet invisible: Prithviraj Chavan quits as CM, did anyone notice?". Firstpost. 27 September 2014. Retrieved 29 September 2014.
  8. ↑ "Maharashtra CM Prithviraj Chavan's rivals get key posts for Assembly polls". India Today. 16 August 2014. Retrieved 29 September 2014.
  9. ↑ "Right man in the wrong polity". Tehelka. 28 April 2012. Retrieved 29 September 2014.
  10. ↑ "BJP, Shiv Sena announce alliance in Maharashtra". IndiaToday.in Mumbai. 4 December 2014. Retrieved May 2015. Check date values in: |access-date= (help)
  11. ↑ Dahiwale, S. M. (1995). "Consolidation of Maratha Dominance in Maharashtra Economic and Political Weekly Vol. 30, No. 6 (Feb. 11, 1995), pp. 336-342 Published by:". Economic and Political Weekly. 30, (6): 336–342. JSTOR 4402382.
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