MAHARASHTRA GOES TO THE POLLS

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 04 MUMBAI 000364 SENSITIVE SIPDIS E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: PGOV SOCI ECON IN SUBJECT: MAHARASHTRA GOES TO THE POLLS REF: A. 2008 MUMBAI 234 ¶B. 2009 MUMBAI 170 ¶C. 2009 Mumbai 130 MUMBAI 00000364 001.2 OF 004 ¶1. (SBU) SUMMARY: Maharashtra, India's second most populous and most industrialized state, will go to the polls on October 13 to elect a new state legislature. The incumbent Congress-Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) coalition government has ruled for the past ten years. Voter satisfaction with this government is low because of severe power shortages, farmer suicides, crumbling urban infrastructure, and recent rapid price rises in staple food items. However, the opposition alliance of Hindu nationalist parties, the Shiv Sena and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP),may find it difficult to dislodge the incumbents because of infighting within the BJP, and the challenge to Shiv Sena posed by the break-away party Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS),led by Raj Thackeray. Neither alliance may reach a simple majority, according to current available projections. Therefore, post-poll maneuvering to attract smaller groupings will play an important role in government formation. As incumbents at the Center, the Congress-NCP alliance will likely have an advantage there. End Summary. Elections Declared -------------- ¶2. (U) On August 31, the Indian Election Commission announced the election schedule for the state of Maharashtra, which will go to the polls on October 13, along with two other states, Arunachal Pradesh and Haryana. (Note: All of these states have Congress Party or Congress-led Coalition governments. End Note.) Maharashtra accounts for over 10 percent of the nation's population, and 13 percent of the nation's GDP. Maharashtra has over 75 million eligible voters, making it one of the biggest Indian states, second in population size after Uttar Pradesh. The Maharashtra state parliament has 288 seats, of which 29 are reserved for scheduled castes (or Dalits) and 25 for scheduled tribes. The Major Contenders -------------- ¶3. (SBU) The ruling Congress-Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) alliance (known as the "Democratic Front"-- DF) was first cobbled together after the September 1999 elections in order to reach a simple majority, though the Congress and the NCP had contested the election separately. (Note: In June 1999, Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar formed the NCP as a break-away from the Congress to protest the Congress Party's then projection of Sonia Gandhi as a prime ministerial candidate. However, the NCP joined the Congress in the 2004-2009 United Progressive Alliance government, and subsequently buried its objections to Sonia Gandhi. End note.) The two parties fought the 2004 and 2009 state and national elections as an alliance, but contested district and lower level elections separately. In the May 2009 national elections, the DF bagged 25 out of the 48 seats to the national Parliament, with a resurgent Congress winning 17, the NCP 8. ¶4. (SBU) State and national level Congress leaders have often urged the NCP to return to the Congress fold because of its common origins, shared commitment to secularism, and the absence of any real policy differences. Recently, however, state level Congress leaders have suggested that the Congress should fight the state elections on its own, without combining with the NCP. Observers believe that these impish statements are part of the larger political maneuverings for negotiations over the allocation of constituencies, or seats, to candidates of each party. (During the last state elections, Congress fought 164 seats, and the NCP 124 out of the total 288 seats.) While the NCP has struggled to find a public identity separate from the Congress, it is dominated by the Maratha community - a large, middle caste with prominent major landholders, especially in the MUMBAI 00000364 002.2 OF 004 sugar growing areas of western Maharashtra. ¶5. (SBU) The Shiv Sena-BJP opposition alliance has a longer history. The two parties have fought national, state, and sub-state level elections as an alliance since 1986, and ruled the state from 1995 to 1999. The Sena began in 1966 as a party to safeguard the interests of local Marathi speakers, and party leaders found it convenient to ally with the BJP because of their shared platform of Hindutva (Political Hinduism). The BJP is the weaker of the two parties in the state, has no major, notable state leaders, and has been riven by infighting at the state level for over a year (see ref B). Should the Sena-BJP coalition come to power, Uddhav Thackeray, the son of Sena founder Balasaheb Thackeray, would most likely be appointed Chief Minister (an honor his father refused). The two parties have almost completed their seat-sharing discussions, and will announce which seats each will contest shortly (likely to be 171 for Sena and 117 seats for the BJP). Unlike the NCP-Congress dynamic, where both parties are essentially fighting for the same voters, the Sena and BJP vote banks are somewhat distinct, which helps promote unity. Sena voters are likely to be from middle or lower caste Marathi-speaking backgrounds, while the BJP draws in upper castes, as well as merchants and Gujarati and Hindi speakers. The Game Changers-- RPI and MNS -------------- ¶6. (U) In addition to the two major alliances of the DF and Sena-BJP, there are two other significant forces in this election - a Third Front led by the Republican Party of India (RPI),a Dalit-based party, and the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS). The RPI was founded by Dr.B.R. Ambedkar in 1951, but it splintered soon after his death in 1956 into almost a dozen factions representing different individual leaders, diffusing its impact. The RPI's various factions are mostly supported by the Mahars, a relatively well-educated and politically aware Dalit caste that, according to some estimates, accounts for nine percent of Maharashtra voters. In last several state and national elections, the Congress and NCP allotted a few seats to various RPI faction leaders in return for Mahar support for Congress-NCP elsewhere in the state. However, in August, various leftist parties and seven fragments of the RPI combined to form a "Third Front." They pledged to contest all 288 seats, joining neither the DF nor the Sena-BJP combines. This consolidation of the Dalit vote, which historically was transferred to the Congress, could cost the Congress-NCP alliance many votes, and a few closely contested seats where Mahars are concentrated, especially in Mumbai, Marathwada (South-Central Maharashtra),and Vidarbha (Eastern Maharashtra). ¶7. (SBU) In March 2006, Sena founder Balasaheb Thackeray's nephew Raj Thackeray left the Sena and formed the break-away Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS),which won several seats in three city government elections in February 2007. The MNS has focused on attracting urban, Marathi-speaking voters and has used rough tactics and divisive issues to make a name for itself quickly. Raj Thackeray has a knack for staying in the news by making controversial, inflammatory statements targeting migrants from northern India - primarily from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar - for burdening the civic infrastructure and taking away local jobs. As a result, in major Maharashtra cities, the nativist, anti-migrant, son-of-the-soil, Marathi-speaking voter turned away from the Sena and towards MNS. The poor and middle class urban Marathi speakers, who believe they are being pushed out by migrants from the North, perceive Raj as the true champion of their interests. His followers' violent attacks against migrants in 2008 have largely gone unpunished; Congress leaders privately admit that they have gone easy on Raj and the MNS because he's divided Sena voters. In the May 2009 national elections, the MNS polled four percent of the total votes in the state and caused the defeat of Sena-BJP alliance candidates in seven national parliamentary seats in the urban centers of Mumbai, Nasik, and Pune. The Times of India calculated that if the same voting pattern persists in October, Raj Thackeray will be a "king maker" in the state election. Should the DF and Sena-BJP each garner about 130 seats each, Raj's 10 to 12 state MUMBAI 00000364 003.2 OF 004 legislators (MLAs) would decide which alliance reaches the magic figure of 145, a simple majority in a house of 288. The Issues-- Monsoon Failure and Price Rise -------------- ¶8. (SBU) By all accounts, the DF's performance has been lackluster at best. In their ten year tenure, no new power generation capacity has been brought online, and few infrastructure projects have made it beyond the drawing board. Several recent tenders have been cancelled over concerns about corruption and the lack of transparency, and the state government was roundly criticized for its reaction to the 26/11 terrorist attacks, which forced the resignation of its Chief and Deputy Chief Ministers. The major issues are the deficient monsoon, and the significant price rise in politically sensitive commodities like legumes, cooking oil, and sugar, which constitute a significant portion of middle class and poor households' food expenditure. More than 10,000 farmers have committed suicide in Maharashtra from 2006-2008, largely due to indebtedness. ¶9. (SBU) BJP party spokesperson Ravi Shankar Prasad was optimistic about his party's prospects the moment elections were announced on August 31. "In Maharashtra, the polls are happening in the midst of people suffering from price rises, drought and lack of security. The people of the state would give a befitting reply to the Congress-NCP combine by electing Shiv Sena-BJP alliance." The Sena-BJP alliance is also hoping that they can capitalize on the state government's security failures, even though this issue did not resonate in the national election. If the swine flu pandemic shows a significant resurgence, or there is a glaring failure in handling the issue, this would harm the ruling alliance's chances. ¶10. (SBU) According to Kumud Sanghvi-Chavre, political editor of the Navbharat Times, an internal survey of the Congress party conducted in the second week of August yielded the following seat predictions: Prediction 2009 Actual 2004 Congress 85 69 Shiv Sena 75 62 BJP 50 54 NCP 40 71 Others 48 32 In this initial projections, the two larger alliances are close (Congress-NCP 125 versus Shiv Sena-BJP 115),and more than 16 percent of the total seats (48 out of 288) are up for grabs by smaller players. Comment: It will be a close finish -------------- ¶11. (SBU) Maharashtra has one of the most intensely competitive political environments in India, and the state is in for an interesting, rambunctious, high-decibel campaign. Margins will be slender in many races, and post-election maneuvering to attract strays to the two alliances will be intense. Despite the DF's poor performance, the opposition is even more uninspiring; with the BJP divided, and the Sena losing momentum MUMBAI 00000364 004.2 OF 004 to the MNS, it is possible that the DF will again return to power. The DF also has a natural advantage in this contest, as it is also ruling at the center, but the BJP will leave no stone unturned because it sorely needs a win to turn attention away from its internal strife. End Comment. TYLER