Monday Musings: Between MVA and VBA, who will blink first?

As Maharashtra gears up for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections, political parties are in the final stage of seat-sharing arrangements between respective alliances. The Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA), comprising of Shiv Sena (UBT)- NCP (SCP)-Congress have held a series of parleys with Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi (VBA) to, what the former calls, form an alliance to save “democracy”.

However, the talks between MVA and VBA are not progressing beyond a preliminary stage the distrust among the two is growing especially after VBA president Prakash Ambedkar on Sunday declared himself as a candidate from Akola while issuing diktat for party workers not to attend any of MVA’s programmes till he directs so. This has posed a new political dilemma before the MVA supporters.

At the heart of it lies VBA’s hard bargain. The VBA, which Ambedkar turned into a force to reckon with in 2019, a year after Bahujan Mahasangh revived itself with a new name and allied with AIMIM. What prompted VBA’s political fortunes to go up was caste clashes at Bhima Koregaon when VBA campaigned hard against the Devendra Fadnavis government.

Subsequently, the AIMIM managed to win the Sambhajinagar seat (then Aurangabad) as OBCs and Muslims voted in its favour during the 2019 Lok Sabha polls to register a victory for its candidate Imtiaz Jaleel. The VBA could not register a win in any constituency with Ambedkar also tasting a defeat in Solapur, but it adversely impacted the prospects of Congress and NCP. The VBA-AIMIM garnered around seven per cent vote share, which was decisive in around nine seats across Maharashtra.

Five years later, there is a growing feeling among MVA leaders that the Prakash Ambedkar-led outfit will eventually go solo in the polls, which has the potential to impact them.

Their growing suspicion comes after VBA’s engagement with the MVA in discussions for alliance appears to be tentative, reminiscent of the scenario in 2019 when last-minute demands led to the collapse of negotiations.

The recent developments indicate a sense of déjà vu, with the VBA presenting a set of conditions for the alliance, subsequently revising them twice. VBA’s latest proposal for MVA was the Sena-Congress-NCP constituent’s need to ensure social engineering by allotting a minimum of 15% tickets to the OBC candidates.

The VBA, however, has not opened its cards on how many seats it wants in the alliance.

The VBA’s claim of a committed 4% vote share further underscores its aspirations for a substantive role in the electoral dynamics.

However, the MVA’s response to the VBA’s overtures reveals a cautious approach.

With the MVA being wary of repeating the past scenario where accommodating the VBA’s demands proved unfeasible, there is a discernible reluctance to be the first to concede ground. The reluctance on both sides to blink first reflects their aim at safeguarding their image as a destroyer of the coalition.

Political observers feel an enviable position by VBA is a possible attempt to stretch things to a point where the other side will call off the alliance talks. This is when there is social pressure from the ground for an MVA-VBA alliance, especially from civil society organisations that are campaigning for the ouster of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) from the Centre.