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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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