With elections around the corner, Maharashtra’s seasoned, octogenarian warhorse, Sharad Pawar, doesn’t hold back. In Satara, his speech was muffled on account of the facial deformation that he has sustained in his ongoing battle with cancer. But his words packed a punch. “Be it 84 or 90 years, this old man will not stop,” he declared, setting off roars from the crowd. Pawar promised that he would not rest until he brings Maharashtra on the “right track”.

For those who’d dared to write him off, the message was clear, with a hint of defiance that he would not relent until the BJP is defeated. As part of the Maharashtra’s Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) alliance, which includes the Congress and the Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray), the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP-Sharad Pawar) has taken on the lead role in the Opposition’s plot to oust the BJP from power. And the spotlight is now on Pawar.

For Pawar and Thackeray, the upcoming election for Maharashtra’s 288-member legislative assembly is a personal battle. The polls mark a pivotal moment for their political survival as regional parties risk becoming marginalised players against a formidable BJP, say political experts.

“It’s an existential battle for the NCP and the Sena to assert their identity and reinforce regional politics against the BJP’s unipolar nationalist brand of politics,” says Girish Kuber, senior journalist and editor of Marathi daily Loksatta.

The NCP split into two factions last year when Pawar’s nephew, senior leader Ajit Pawar, left the party with a majority of MLAs to join the ruling BJP and the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena coalition government. This breakup left Sharad Pawar with just 14 MLAs. Party leaders claimed the move was engineered to end Pawar’s political career and undermine the NCP’s regional influence. Pawar also faced sharp criticism from Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who mocked him as a bhatakti aatma (wandering spirit) and suggested he join the BJP.

The Shiv Sena experienced a similar split in 2022, when Shinde broke away with a majority of MLAs, forcing the then-Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray to step down. Sena leaders also accused the BJP of attempting to dismantle their party and weaken Maharashtra. Both Thackeray and Pawar ultimately lost their parties’ original symbols and official nomenclatures after their leaders defected to join the BJP’s Mahayuti coalition. This unprecedented political upheaval, with a split in Maharashtra’s two main regional parties, plunged the state into deep instability and confusion.

The two regional parties have split into four units now! The Shiv Sena led by Shinde and its faction Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) and the NCP led by deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar and NCP (Sharad Pawar).

The assembly election will be a trial by fire for the NCP, the Shiv Sena and its two factions. While Shinde and Ajit Pawar currently have the backing of the BJP, they must win maximum seats to prove their credibility and retain their position in the ruling alliance.

Ajit Pawar faces a challenging task ahead, especially after his poor showing in the Lok Sabha elections, where he managed to secure only a single seat. He’ll need not only to boost his party’s performance, but also to win key constituencies where his candidates will be contesting against the NCP-SP faction. For Shinde, too, securing the maximum seats against the Thackeray faction will be crucial.

Kuber notes that in the current scenario, Thackeray and Sharad Pawar enjoy significant public sympathy. Popular sentiment pits the perception that the BJP, a non Maharashtra-rooted party, created fissures between the state’s two symbolically significant political parties led by the Pawars and the Thackerays. This sentiment could be their best opportunity to convert ground support into votes and reclaim lost power.

“Under Thackeray, the Shiv Sena lost its regional connection when it shifted its agenda towards secular Hindutva and aligned with the Congress and the NCP to form the MVA alliance,” he says. “For the NCP, Sharad Pawar remains its last towering leader, with the party’s identity and appeal deeply tied to him. Both parties now need to prove their strength in the elections,” he adds, emphasising that the survival of regional parties like the Sena and the NCP is essential to preserving the current federal structure.

Maharashtra’s politics has long been defined by the regional characteristics of the Shiv Sena and the NCP, which maintain a strong grassroot connection and embody regional sentiment within the federal structure, says Parimal Maya Sudhakar, a professor at the MIT World Peace University, Pune.

Sena is prominent in the urban areas of Mumbai, Pune, Nashik and the Konkan region, while the NCP enjoys a strong support base among the Maratha community and dominates Western Maharashtra. Leaders of the two parties have helmed the power structure, serving as chief minister, deputy chief minister and holding other key ministerial posts.

“In linguistic states, the existence of regional parties is important in raising regional sentiments vis-a-vis Hindi-speaking states and protecting the autonomy of the state at the national level,” Sudhakar adds.

Since their formation, the Sena and the NCP’s politics have revolved around protecting regional interests. Bal Thackeray formed Shiv Sena in 1966 based on the sons of the soil agenda, and the party’s politics was rooted in safeguarding the native Marathi identity and pride. Sharad Pawar, who left the Congress to form the NCP in 1999, has established a strong leadership in Maharashtra’s sugar cooperatives and agricultural credit cooperative societies.

The dominance of the Sena and the NCP compelled national parties like the Congress and the BJP to play the role of junior partners earlier. This was until 2014, when the Sena-BJP saffron alliance came apart after being wedded together since 1989.

With the rise of Hindutva politics and Modi’s increasing popularity, the BJP refused to play second fiddle to the Sena. The BJP’s emergence as the single largest party also meant that the party’s political face, Devendra Fadnavis, was anointed as the first BJP chief minister of the state.

The BJP has since expanded its hold on the state’s politics, relegating regional parties to the margins. In 2019, after the Uddhav Thackeray-led Sena split with the BJP and formed the ruling MVA alliance with the NCP and the Congress, relations between the state government and the Centre turned acrimonious. The Centre versus State battle caused the state to suffer economically as it lost several foreign investments and industrial projects, a point being driven home by the Thackaray’s Sena faction and the Sharad Pawar’s NCP.

The political skullduggery and horse-trading in the state, since 2022, were orchestrated by the BJP to undermine Maharashtra’s unique regional identity, known for its progressive politics, cultural advancement and social movements, says Prakash Akolkar, an author and long-time Sena expert. The BJP uses regional parties as crutches to expand its presence in the state, and once in power, it absorbs them through its politics of manoeuvring. He cites the status of the Biju Janata Dal in Odisha and the Asom Gana Parishad in Assam as examples.

“The BJP is trying to wipe out the influence of regional parties in Maharashtra and Jharkhand. It propagates the agenda of ‘one country, one language’ and does not want regionalism to thrive,” says Akolkar.

Will Sharad Pawar’s NCP and Uddhav Thackeray’s Sena stage a comeback in the upcoming polls, reviving the sustained strength of regionalism, or will the BJP succeed with its unilateral nationalism? The results of the assembly elections hold the ballot to this answer.

(This appeared in the print as 'Maha vs Bharat')