Thackeray cousins’ first political alliance comes a cropper

Uddhav and Raj Thackeray's alliance faced defeat in the BEST employees' credit society elections, winning no seats as BJP-led panels dominated.

MUMBAI: Uddhav and Raj Thackeray received a jolt on Wednesday when their first alliance in a poll—the BEST employees’ credit society election—came a cropper, not just causing the Shiv Sena (UBT) to lose power in the credit cooperative society but failing to win it even a single seat. The election to the 21 seats of the society was held on August 18.

Members of BEST Workers Union celebrated with union leader Shashank Rao outside the counting centre at 4am on Wednesday.

The panel floated by trade union leader Shashank Rao’s BEST Workers Union won 14 seats, the BJP-sponsored Sahakar panel won six while the SC/ST Employees Union won one seat. Rao, who joined the BJP in 2024, gave the credit for his panel’s victory to chief minister Devendra Fadnavis and Mumbai guardian minister Ashish Shelar.

The Sena (UBT) and MNS had jointly fielded a panel as the BEST Kamgar Sena attempted to retain control of the society that it had won in the past two elections. Accusations of foul play flew thick and fast from the losing alliance regarding the BJP’s use of money and political power.

Just days before the election, the Mahayuti government’s cooperation department and Economic Offences Wing (EOW) had served notices on office-bearers of the credit society over alleged irregularities. On the day of voting, a verbal war broke out between Sena (UBT) leader Suhas Samant, who was leading the panel, and BJP MLC Prasad Lad who fielded the BJP’s Sahakar panel. Samant and MNS leader Sandeep Deshpande accused the BJP-led panel of distributing money to voters.

Rao gave the credit for his panel’s victory to Fadnavis and Shelar. “Issues such as the payment of Covid allowance to BEST employees and the salary of contract employees had been hanging fire for long,” he said. “When we reached out to Shelar and Fadnavis, they took a quick decision to help BEST employees. This society was under our union from 2006 to 2016 and now BEST employees have again shown faith in us.”

The defeat came as an embarrassment for the Shiv Sena (UBT) and Raj Thackeray’s Maharashtra Navnirman Sena, as it was seen as the first test of the alliance between the Thackeray cousins. Mahayuti leaders took several digs at the Thackeray cousins. The BJP’s Prasad Lad said that the BEST credit society elections had shown that the so-called Thackeray brand was nothing but a big zero. “The sum total of two zeros is also zero,” taunted BJP chief spokesperson Keshav Upadhye.

Samant alleged that the Sena (UBT) lost the election due to the massive use of money power by a BJP-led panel and the misuse of political power by sending notices to the society from the cooperation department and EOW. “Of the 15,000 voters, we have around 12,000 employees in our union,” he said. “But the BJP-led panel used money power to lure them. We thought people would not vote for them despite the distribution of money, but money power turned more powerful and we lost. The notice by government agencies also created confusion in the minds of voters.”

MNS leader Sandeep Deshpande said that the results ought not to be seen as a test for the BMC elections, as the two were different. “I congratulate Shashank Rao and all the candidates who won,” he said. “But no one should connect these results with the BMC elections, as the two elections have different scales and Marathi people will vote in different ways.”

CM Devendra Fadnavis said that the BJP had not politicised the election as it was just an employees’ cooperative society poll. “Both Shashank Rao and Prasad Lad are from our party, but we kept politics away from these elections,” he said. “However, the Sena (UBT) and MNS didn’t, publicising them as the elections of Brand Thackeray and the reunion of the Thackeray cousins. The results show that people did not like it, and they were thus rejected.”