Mumbai: Hailing Maratha warrior king Chhatrapati Shivaji as the inspiration behind the country’s Navy, projecting the three-party ruling alliance in Maharashtra as one for development, making a big infrastructure pitch — Prime Minister Narendra Modi has visited Maharashtra six times in the past six months and used almost every stage to set the tone for the upcoming Lok Sabha election.
Modi’s latest trip to the state came Friday, when he visited the Solapur district, just a week after he visited Mumbai. On both stages, he talked up the ‘Modi guarantee’.
At Solapur, Modi marked the completion of 90,000 houses under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (Urban), and another 15,000 of the Raynagar Housing Society, whose beneficiaries include unorganised labour such as handloom workers, ragpickers, and beedi and power-loom workers, among others.
He also laid the foundation stone for projects under the Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT), and distributed the first and second instalments to 10,000 beneficiaries of PM SVANidhi, a post-lockdown scheme to facilitate affordable loans for street vendors to resume operations, in Maharashtra.
“On 22 January, one lakh families in Maharashtra will light the Ram Jyoti in pucca houses of their own,” PM Modi said at his rally in Solapur, referring to the Ram Lalla pran pratishtha event in Ayodhya.
Modi also attempted to reach out to the Padmashali (weavers) community in Solapur, who comprise a significant number of voters, as well as the Lingayats.
“Many Padmashali families from here live in Ahmedabad. They used to give me food despite their own houses being very small,” Modi said.
Maharashtra is seen as one of the more complicated states for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) as the party is dependent on the support of two regional players — the Shinde-led Shiv Sena and the Ajit Pawar faction of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP).
The Opposition is also tough, on account of the alliance between the Congress, the Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) and the Sharad Pawar-led NCP. There hasn’t been a single election since the NCP’s split in July last year to test the electoral strength of the two alliances at the parliamentary or the assembly level.
“Modi’s frequent visits help in branding the three-party government as one ‘Modi government’ in public consciousness. Maharashtra is important for the BJP as it sends the second largest number of seats (48) to the Lok Sabha after Uttar Pradesh, where the party has already maximised its gain,” political analyst Hemant Desai told ThePrint.
Maharashtra, he said, is complicated this election not just because of the splits in the Shiv Sena and the NCP, but also because of the Maratha-versus-Other Backward Classes divide and a possible sympathy for Uddhav Thackeray after officially losing the ‘Shiv Sena’ mantle to CM Eknath Shinde, and how that might play out.
The brain behind the Raynagar Housing Society complex that Modi inaugurated was Narsayya Adam, a former MLA from the Communist Party of India (Marxist).
“Inaugurating these houses helps Modi send a message that his government delivers development work irrespective of party lines,” Desai said.
ThePrint reached BJP spokesperson Keshav Upadhye by call for a comment, and a response is awaited.
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Modi in Maharashtra since August
12 January: Nashik, Mumbai
Modi visited the Kalaram Temple in Nashik’s Panchavati where Ram, Sita and Lakshman are said to have spent the first few years of their 14-year exile. The visit was politically important ahead of the inauguration of the Ram temple in Ayodhya on 22 January, and also because rival Uddhav Thackeray has declared he will visit the Kalaram Temple on 22 January after not being invited to the Ayodhya ceremony.
Later, in Mumbai, Modi inaugurated the country’s longest sea link — the Sewri-Nhava Sheva Mumbai Trans Harbour Link — called the ‘Atal Setu’ after former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.
Here, he made a big infrastructure pitch ahead of this year’s Lok Sabha election, highlighting mega projects that his government has inaugurated across the country.
He also compared his government’s achievements to the former Congress-led government’s work, emphasising how the latter took nearly a decade to complete Mumbai’s Bandra-Worli sea link despite it being much shorter than the Atal Setu, which took six years to build. He also praised the work of CM Eknath Shinde and Deputy CMs Devendra Fadnavis and Ajit Pawar on the development front.
4 December 2023: Sindhudurg
Modi attended the Navy Day celebrations at Sindhudurg in Maharashtra’s coastal Konkan region. Here, he hailed Maratha warrior king Chhatrapati Shivaji for recognising the importance of naval capabilities for any nation.
He said his government is committed to the development of the Konkan region, mentioning the opening of medical colleges in districts such as Sindhudurg, Ratnagiri and Alibaug, the inauguration of Sindhudurg’s Chipi airport, and how his government is drafting special schemes for cashew farmers, among other initiatives.
26 October 2023: Shirdi
Modi inaugurated a new waiting complex for those who queue up for darshan at the Shirdi temple. He then conducted a jal pujan of the much-delayed Nilwande dam in Maharashtra’s Ahmednagar district and inaugurated the left bank canal of the dam.
Here, he accused NCP leader Sharad Pawar of politicking in the name of farmers “rather than working for them”, saying that he did nothing for the state as Union agriculture minister.
14 October 2023: Mumbai
Modi was in the city to inaugurate the 141st session of the International Olympic Committee (IOC). This marked India’s second time hosting the IOC session. The first time was in 1983.
1 August 2023: Pune
Modi was in the city to attend the Lokmanya Tilak Award ceremony of the Tilak Smarak Trust and inaugurate projects, including a Metro line in the city. This was his first visit to the city after the Ajit Pawar-led faction split from Sharad Pawar’s NCP to join hands with the ruling Shinde-led Shiv Sena and the BJP.
Speaking in Pune, Modi emphasised how different parties had come together for the common cause of development in Maharashtra, and their aim was that Maharashtra should develop at a faster pace. He also used the stage to slam Congress-led governments in Karnataka and Rajasthan at the time for what he called the lack of development in the states.
(Edited by Sunanda Ranjan)
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