The descent of Navi Mumbai’s uncrowned king

Ganesh Naik recently created a stir by attacking the CM and his party. Is he trying to rise from the ashes?

Ganesh Naik, once the strongman of Thane district, is at a cross-roads in his political career which is unlikely to ease. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MLA from Airoli has lost his clout in the district following many electoral setbacks and influential loyalists have deserted him, bringing to question his political future.

Ganesh Naik spent two decades in NCP, with his mentor Sharad Pawar. He quit the party to join BJP in 2019. ( (Photo by Bachchan Kumar/ HT Photo)

Three recent incidents have triggered the question.

In the second week of September, Naik held a massive Janata Darbar, a throwback to his heydays when he was the guardian minister, where citizens raised over 800 grievances. In response, Naik sharply criticized the Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation (NMMC) officials, which was perceived as a direct attack on chief minister Eknath Shinde, who controls the administration.

A fortnight later, he generated a controversy when the NMMC-owned Morbe dam overflowed and Naik’s son Sanjeev Naik and former mayors Sagar Naik and Sudhakar Sonawane, along with a few ex-BJP corporators performed jal pujan at the dam. The Congress termed it an “illegal” act and demanded action. This is the only corporation in MMR which has its own dam for water and Ganesh Naik had played a key role in securing the city’s water supply. The jal pujan was seen by political rivals as the Naik family reasserting their power over their erstwhile fiefdom.

Ganesh Naik, a veteran of many political battles, has in the past managed to bounce back to form thanks to his political acumen. Can the uncrowned king of Navi Mumbai do it again – this is the big question doing the rounds in political circles.

At the peak of his political career – between 2009 and 2014 -- Naik was the state and Thane guardian minister, his elder son Sanjeev Naik was Thane MP, younger son was an MLA from Airoli and nephew Sagar Naik, mayor of Navi Mumbai. Over the last decade the glamour was gradually lost.

The 73-year-old, who has been politically active for the last 45 years, experienced a meteoric rise rather quickly. From a union leader in the Thane-Belapur industrial belt and heading the Shramik Sena, a workers’ union, he became a Shiv Sena (SS) MLA in 1990 and was made the group leader in the house after Chhagan Bhujbal exited the party.

Naik, who was in the running for the chief minister’s post, was made environment minister in the first SS-BJP government in 1995. That year, he led the party to victory in the first civic election held in Navi Mumbai after the formation of NMMC. His son Sanjeev Naik became the first mayor of the city.

As Naik’s stature in the area grew, differences cropped up with Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thackeray, and the final nail in the coffin was driven when Thackeray, on his visit to the city, ordered the closure of quarries – it was an attack on Naik’s financial clout. Naik resigned from the government in 1999 and quit the party; it was a bold step at a time when taking on Sena was a huge risk.

Naik contested the assembly election as an independent with the support of Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) 1999, but unexpectedly lost to Shiv Sena candidate Sitaram Bhoir; he claimed he had been cheated of victory.

Rather than sulk, he soon joined the NCP and ensured the party’s flag fluttered at NMMC headquarters, replacing that of Sena in the 2000 civic election. Four years later, he scored a record victory with the highest margin in the state as the NCP candidate from the Belapur assembly constituency (which then extended from Belapur to Mira Bhayander). The Congress-NCP government was formed, and Naik was back as a cabinet minister; he almost became the home minister following the 26/11 attack in Mumbai in 2008.

Naik ensured that the NCP rule in NMMC was fortified in 2005 once again. His younger son Sandeep Naik entered the fray as a corporator and went on to become the standing committee chairman for three consecutive terms. He was not named the mayor as the post was reserved for a woman candidate.

By now, he was a man to reckon with in the party and the NCP chief Sharad Pawar allowed him a free hand in the region. Naik decided ticket distribution and even party posts in the district. This ruffled feathers in the party, particularly leaders like Jitendra Awhad.

His clout grew in Thane district when his elder son Sanjeev Naik won the Lok Sabha election from the Shiv Sena stronghold of Thane constituency in 2009. In his bastion, Navi Mumbai, Naik himself won the 2009 assembly election from Belapur constituency, where he hardly campaigned, while ensuring the victory of Sandeep Naik from Airoli constituency. Naik was rewarded with multiple ministries -- environment, excise and labour -- along with being made guardian minister of Thane.

He won the 2010 civic election once again for the party. This time he ensured his nephew Sagar Naik, whose father, Naik’s younger brother Dnyaneshwar Naik, had been a corporator, became the mayor for the five-year tenure of the house.

The honeymoon ended soon after Narendra Modi made a mark in the national politics in 2014. Naik’s stranglehold on the region started loosening. With the nation swept by the Modi wave, his son Sanjeev Naik lost the Lok Sabha election. Realising that the winds were changing at the time, Naik prepared to join the BJP. In the aftermath of the 2014 BJP win, his supporters held a public meeting, where his sons were present, appealing to Naik to take the plunge. It is believed, Pawar’s rapport with the top BJP leadership scuttled Naik’s entry into the party, despite the recommendation of a top industrialist.

In the assembly election that year, Naik’s arch-rival in the party Manda Mhatre, who had quit the NCP and joined BJP, blaming Naik for her exit, defeated him by 1,491 votes. Naik’s loss, despite the opposition votes being split between Shiv Sena and BJP, was a shocker. Shiv Sena candidate Vijay Nahata was not far behind in the third place.

Sandeep Naik managed to scrape through by a margin of 8,725 votes defeating Shiv Sena candidate Vijay Chougule, thanks to his cousin and BJP candidate Vaibhav Naik, polling 46,405 votes, thereby damaging Chougule’s prospects.

The leader who had reigned for years was now in the shadows. Having ruled the civic body comfortably over the years, NCP failed to get a majority in the 2015 civic elections. Naik depended on the support of five independents to get a simple majority. The independents wooed by the Shiv Sena finally extended support to Naik for a bargain. Naik had little option but to make the independent group corporator Sudhakar Sonawane mayor of the city. He was also forced to reach an understanding with Congress, and several civic posts were offered to them.

Realising another defeat could mean the end of his political career, in 2019, prior to the assembly election, reportedly at the insistence of Sandeep Naik, he reluctantly, turned away from his mentor Sharad Pawar and joined the BJP bandwagon whose PM he had publicly criticised several times.

It was clear that in the new party, Naik would not enjoy the clout he had in NCP. In the assembly election of 2019, BJP offered only one assembly ticket -- to his son Sandeep Naik, the sitting MLA from Airoli. Naik, who over the years gave away the tickets, was himself refused candidature from Belapur constituency where his arch-rival sitting MLA Manda Mhatre was repeated.

Naik couldn’t possibly stay out in wilderness for another five years. He decided to contest from Airoli, after Sandeep Naik backed out to facilitate his father’s candidature. Ganesh Naik won the election that BJP and SS contested in alliance, as NCP faced a leadership vacuum in the city.

There was more bad news for Naik. He was expected to be made a minister in the BJP-SS government post-election, however the alliance collapsed and the MVA government was formed, leaving Naik in in the cold once again.

No senior party post was offered to him and he seemed to cut a sorry figure in the new dispensation, the culture and protocols of which he was not accustomed to. As a leader of NCP his word was law. There were reports of a frustrated Naik attempting to return to NCP and even Shiv Sena, but the leaderships of both parties were not keen to have him back. The BJP was miffed as well.

Sidelined in the party, Naik went all out hoping for a comeback by aggressively campaigning for the NMMC elections due in 2020 for a BJP win. He however, faced an uphill task with several of his staunch loyalists with strong mass base leaving him over the years to join other parties particularly the Shiv Sena. He had to prop up little-known local leaders. His differences with BJP MLA Manda Mhatre and lack of coordination with the original BJP cadre that resisted his attempts to take control, did not help.

After the pandemic striking, followed by the controversy over OBC reservations, the civic elections were put on hold.

The fall of the MVA and Eknath Shinde, one time his junior in Shiv Sena, becoming the chief minister worsened the situation for Naik. Ajit Pawar joining the government hasn’t helped either. Naik never got along with either

Naik is still out of the cabinet, while Sandeep Naik has only recently been made chief of the party’s city unit after repeated extensions to the previous city chief Ramchandra Gharat who continued at the helm even after Naik had joined the party. Sanjeev Naik and Sagar Naik are yet to bag major posts.

These days, Naik is busy testing waters by raking up civic issues, leading his party former corporators to meet the municipal commissioner, complaining about lack of work done in the city and criticizing the officials. According to the opposition – these symbolize a tall leader’s fall from grace.

Reaching dizzying heights

Naik is called the ‘architect’ of Navi Mumbai by his loyalists who point to the fast-paced progress of the city under his leadership. He kept the peace during the 1992 riots, when neighbouring cities were engulfed with violence. As a Sena leader he ensured no such incident occurred in Navi Mumbai.

His decision to get NMMC to purchase Morbe dam, the first by a civic body since Independence, has kept the city from facing any water crisis, unlike Mumbai. Both the native Agri-Koli community of the villages and the new cosmopolitan settlers favoured him. The road infrastructure in the city with the toll free Thane-Belapur road and concretization have been the highlights of his tenure. Other wins have been institutions such as NMMC civic hospital, Vishnudas Bhave auditorium, theme-based gardens, state-of-the-art sewage treatment plants for recycling waste water, scientific landfill site and recycling plants, and the landmark NMMC headquarters.

Calling him a “visionary leader” Suraj Patil, BJP youth leader and Navi Mumbai general secretary, said, “He was successful as he worked for the betterment of the city. He was the first to introduce the concept of redevelopment taking into account the needs of the people.”

What caused the setbacks?

A man who at one time had a connect with the grassroots, gradually lost the touch. Kishore Patkar, a Shiv Sena coordinator and a former Naik associate, said, “Over time, Naik only gave electoral assurances. Several projects have remained only on paper. He failed to implement them, thus losing trust of people, while led to his downfall.”

His influential loyalists, including Vijay Chougule, M K Madhvi, Suresh Kulkarni, Kishore Patkar and Vaibhav Gaikwad, left him citing their differences with Sandeep Naik. Over time, he also underestimated his opponents, evident in the case of Manda Mhatre. His obsession with promoting his family did not go down well with supporters and voters. And more recently, he has not been able to forge ties with the new generation – many are unaware of him.