“Today I really believe that, you may like them or dislike them, you may agree or disagree, but the only two parties in the state that have really stood up for their ideology and have not compromised are Shiv Sena under Mr Shinde and BJP,” said the former MP from Mumbai South constituency. 

The Thackerays and Deoras were two families that shaped the politics of Mumbai from the 1960s from the opposite ends of the political spectrum. As their scions take on each other in the state assembly polls scheduled on 20 November from Mumbai’s Worli constituency, they are still on the opposite ends of the political spectrum, but have traded places.

Aaditya Thackeray’s Shiv Sena (UBT) is in alliance with the Congress as part of Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA), which also includes the Nationalist Congress Party (Sharadchandra Pawar). The MVA was formed when undivided Shiv Sena splintered its alliance with the BJP in 2019 to join hands with political and ideological rivals, Congress and then undivided NCP.

Bal Thackeray’s Shiv Sena underwent a vertical split in 2022 when Shinde walked out of the party with a majority of MLAs in tow, claiming to be the real Sena and joining hands with the BJP to form a government in the state. 

Milind Deora walked out of the Congress in January this year to join hands with the Shinde-led Shiv Sena.

Deora told ThePrint, he decided to join the Shinde-led Sena to support its development agenda. “Mr Shinde invited me to join him because he wants me to help take Mumbai forward, take Maharashtra forward, help the economic agenda of the city and the state. These are things I like doing. These are my strengths, the reason why I entered politics.”

“I had reached a stage in my earlier party where I didn’t feel, I don’t think the party was in the frame of mind to do something constructive. It’s whole focus was to speak negatively about the opposition,” he added.

Also Read: 6 regions, 36 districts & 288 seats: How to read Maharashtra’s electoral map

High-stakes contest in Worli

The Worli assembly constituency, a cluster of elite high-rises, plush offices, slums, chawls (tenements), mill workers’ residences, lower- and middle-income group housing, the landmark Haji Ali Dargah, and a vast coastline dotted with fisherfolk colonies, is exceedingly diverse. The assembly segment where Milind Deora and Aaditya Thackeray have locked horns has been traditionally a bastion of the undivided Sena with the party’s Datta Nalawade holding the seat for four straight terms from 1990.

The seat slipped from the undivided Shiv Sena’s grip only once in 2009—it was after delimitation when parts of Worli and Sewri were rearranged as one constituency. The undivided Shiv Sena won the seat back in 2014. 

However, before the 2019 assembly polls, Sachin Ahir who won the seat in 2009 defected from the NCP to the still undivided Shiv Sena and started closely working with Aaditya Thackeray to secure the Worli win for him, which junior Thackeray did with a margin of 67,427 votes.

Even during the Lok Sabha elections, the undivided Shiv Sena has been registering a sizable lead in the Worli assembly segment. 

In 2019, when Shiv Sena’s Arvind Sawant won the Mumbai South constituency, he took a lead of 36,154 votes in the Worli segment over Milind Deora, who had contested from the Congress. In 2014, Sawant had registered a lead of 34,743 votes in the Worli segment trouncing Deora. 

In comparison, this Lok Sabha election, the first since the Shiv Sena split, Sawant’s lead in the Worli constituency against the Shinde-led Shiv Sena was much slimmer at 6,715 votes, boosting the ruling Mahayuti’s confidence about the assembly election.

Moreover, in 2009 when Deora had won the Mumbai South parliamentary seat, he had registered a lead of 8,533 votes against the Shiv Sena as the Raj Thackeray-led Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) had taken away some of the Shiv Sena’s votes – 38,089 to be precise.

This election is a heady cocktail of both these factors—two Shiv Senas and the MNS in the fray—making the Deora vs Thackeray contest a challenging one. 

Deora is confident about his fortune. “He (Aaditya Thackeray) is a young man. I have known him well. He is a progressive young boy. Unfortunately, the kind of politics that he has been doing, not just locally, but for Mumbai and Maharashtra, is essentially opposing for the sake of opposing. I think this is something that has hurt the city and state very badly,” he said.

Deora also slammed his opponent for allegedly outsourcing his work as Worli MLA to other MLAs, MLCs and corporators from the area, saying this is where he plans to differentiate himself.

Speaking to ThePrint last month, Aaditya Thackeray had attributed the narrow margin in Worli, and many other seats, to irregular voting patterns. 

“Margins were narrow because in Mumbai 20 May was a holiday, the voter list had issues so a lot of people could not vote, voting patterns were not proper. We even held a press conference saying people should go out and vote. A lot of factors came into play, but going forward we will do well in all seats where we won with small margins. I have served the people and they will bless me,” he had said.

‘Speedbreaker politics’

Deora said India’s investments suffered during the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) regime at the Centre with the Union government giving conflicting signals. 

“The then PM Dr Manmohan Singh gave a clearance for the Navi Mumbai airport, soon after that the environment minister overturned the PM’s decision. Conflicting signals. Investors said forget it, we are not going to invest in India, there was a bank crisis, people fled, and now you see some consistency in the government so things are better. That same thing happened here. In the 2.5 years (of the MVA regime) you saw all sorts of things,” Deora said. 

He added that Aaditya Thackeray opposed several projects proposed by the Centre—the Nanar oil refinery, the Madhavan port, the car shed for Mumbai’s first underground Metro and so on. “If you oppose every project, you cannot expect people to come and invest in the state. That now has been done away with. We do want to balance the environment also. But just this opposition for the sake of opposition does not help,” Deora said. 

He said there is a “fear psychosis” that the Opposition, especially Aaditya Thackeray, is perpetuating in Maharashtra. “He has a certain speed breaker mentality where for every particular issue, he just wants to put up a speed breaker and spread fear,” he added.

‘Unspoken rule in MVA’

In 2019, when Deora had contested the Mumbai South parliamentary poll from the Congress, he had got leaders from the corporate world such as Mukesh Ambani and Uday Kotak to endorse him in a video message. 

In an election framed by allegations of the Mahayuti government favouring the Adani Group, Deora said every politician has links with industrialists and businessmen, and those who are ashamed of talking of them, or prefer to hide them do so because they have something to hide.

“There is an unspoken rule I know within the MVA to oppose anything that a few business leaders do. I know what the strategy was in one particular party of the MVA for obvious reasons. The aim was to try to create a narrative of rich vs poor. In my opinion those things don’t work because a lot of those are built on innuendos, conspiracy theories, lies and I always warned my erstwhile party,” Deora said.

The former Union minister also slammed the Shiv Sena (UBT) for saying it will scrap the tender for the Dharavi redevelopment project if it comes to power. The Shinde-led Mahayuti government has awarded the contract to redevelop Dharavi to Adani Realty. “Any project on a public-private-partnership works when you are giving some degree of incentives to the developer to take on that development,” Deora said.

“And so, you have to give incentives. Are those incentives excessive? You can debate that. Are those incentives not enough? You can debate that. Just because you have a problem with one particular person you are trying to deprive 2 plus lakh people from getting a home in the heart of the city, that’s very unfortunate,” he added.

He said his father, Murli Deora, was very comfortable maintaining relations with businessmen and using those connections for the betterment of his constituents. “This is the way you use these relations in my opinion. You are not using them for your own personal gain. You are using them for the community upliftment. As community leaders, business leaders also have CSR funds, they also want to give back,” Deora said. “Everyone has these relationships. Some are ashamed, for the wrong reasons I believe, and others have no problem in openly accepting these relationships.”

(Edited by Amrtansh Arora)

Also Read: How Mahayuti & MVA have been getting rebel candidates across Maharashtra poll map to stand down