Maharashtra is a state in the western region of India and is India's third-largest state by area. It has over 112 million inhabitants and its capital, Mumbai, has a population of approximately 18 million. Nagpur is Maharashtra's second capital as well as its winter capital. Government in the state is organized on parliamentary system. Power is further devolved to large city councils, District councils (Zila Parishad) and sub-district (Taluka) councils and the village parish councils (Gram panchayat). The politics of the state is dominated by the numerically strong Maratha-Kunbi community. There are National and regional parties in the state serving different demographics such as those based on religion, caste, urban and rural residents.
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Government structure
The government of Maharashtra is conducted within a framework of parliamentary government, with a bicameral legislature consisting of the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly and the Maharashtra Legislative Council. The Legislative Assembly (Vidhan Sabha) is the lower chamber and consists of 288 members who are elected for five-year terms. There are 25 and 29 seats reserved for the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes and others respectively The Legislative Council (Vidhan Parishad) is the upper chamber and is a permanent body of 78 members. The government of Maharashtra is headed by the Chief Minister, who is chosen by the party or alliance with a majority of members in the Legislative Assembly. The Chief Minister, along with the council of ministers, drives the legislative agenda and exercises most of the executive powers. However, the constitutional and formal head of the state is the Governor, who is appointed for a five-year term by the President of India on the advice of the Union government.
Maharashtra also elects members to both chambers of the Indian Parliament. Representatives to India's lower chamber, the Lok Sabha, are elected by adult universal suffrage and a first-past-the-post system to represent their respective constituencies, and they hold their seats for five years or until the body is dissolved by the President on the advice of the council of ministers.Representatives to the upper chamber, the Rajya Sabha, are elected indirectly by the Vidhan Sabha members.
There are three further levels of government below the state: districts, Taluka (sub-divisions), and Gram panchayat (village parish councils) respectively. Cities and towns have their own separate governments. There are 36 districts in Maharashtra, which are typically grouped into six divisions, though there are no division-level governments.The state has a long tradition of highly powerful planning bodies at district and local levels. Local self governance institutions in rural areas include 34 zilla parishads, 355 Taluka Panchayat samitis and 27,993 Gram panchayats. Urban areas in the state are governed by 26 Municipal Corporations, 222 Municipal Councils, four Nagar Panchayats and seven Cantonment Boards. The administration in each district is headed by a District collector, who belongs to the Indian Administrative Service and is assisted by a number of officers belonging to Maharashtra state services. The Deputy Commissioner of Police, an officer belonging to the Indian Police Service and assisted by the officers of the Maharashtra Police Service, maintains law and order in addition to other related issues in each district. The Deputy Conservator of Forests, an officer belonging to the Indian Forest Service, manages the forests, environment and wildlife of the district, assisted by the officers of Maharashtra Forest Service and Maharashtra Forest Subordinate Service. Sectoral development in the districts is looked after by the district head of each development department, such as Public Works, Health, Education, Agriculture and Animal Husbandry.
Political parties & alliances
The politics of Maharashtra since its inception in 1960 and also of predecessor states such as Bombay has been dominated by the Indian National Congress party. Maharashtra became a bastion of the Congress party producing stalwarts such as Yashwantrao Chavan, Vasantdada Patil, Vasantrao Naik and Shankarrao Chavan. Sharad Pawar has been a towering personality in the state and National politics for over thirty years. During his career, he has split the Congress twice with significant consequences for the state politics. The Congress party enjoyed a near unchallenged dominance of the political landscape until 1995 when the Shiv Sena and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) secured an overwhelming majority in the state to form a coalition government. After his second parting from the Congress party in 1999, Sharad Pawar formed the NCP but joined a Congress led coalition to form the state government after the 1999 Assembly elections.Prithviraj Chavan of the Congress party was the last Chief Minister of Maharashtra under the Congress-NCP alliance that ruled until 2014. For the 2014 assembly polls, the two alliances between the NCP and Congress and between the BJP and Shiv Sena respectively broke down over seat allocations. In the election, the largest number of seats went to the Bharatiya Janata Party, with 122 seats. The BJP initially formed a minority government under Devendra Fadnavis but Shiv Sena has, as of December 2014, entered the Government and therefore the Government now enjoys a comfortable majority in the Maharashtra Vidhansabha.
A period of coalition governments began in 1995 with the victory of Shiv Sena and the BJP. Shiv Sena was the larger party in the coalition. From 1999 until 2014, the NCP and INC formed one coalition while Shiv Sena and the BJP formed another for three successive elections, which the INC-NCP alliance won.
Other parties in the state with limited appeal in the state include Communist party of India, Peasant and workers party, various factions of the dalit dominated Republican Party of India , Bahujan Samaj Party and the Socialist party.
Dominant groups in Maharashtra politics
The state of Maharashtra was formed on 1 May 1960, and since then its politics have been evolving. The INC was long without a major challenger, and enjoyed overwhelming support from the influential state's sugar co-operatives and thousands of other cooperative organizations involved in the rural agricultural economy of the state such as marketing of dairy and vegetable produce, credit unions etc. For better part of the late colonial and early post independence, in Bombay state and its successor Maharashtra state, the politics of the state has been dominated by the mainly rural Maratha-Kunbi caste. The community account for 31% of the population of Maharashtra.They dominate the cooperative institutions and with the resultant economic power, control politics from the village level up to the Assembly and Lok Sabha seats. Since 1980s, this group has also been active in setting up private educational institutions.,, Major past political figures of Congress party from Maharashtra such as Keshavrao Jedhe, Yashwantrao Chavan, and Shankarrao Chavan and Vilasrao Deshmukh have been from this group. Sharad Pawar, who had been a towering figure in Maharashtrian and national politics, belongs to this group.
The state's political status quo was upset when Sharad Pawar defected from the INC, which was perceived as the vehicle of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty, to form the Nationalist Congress Party. This followed disputes between Pawar and the INC president Sonia Gandhi. This offshoot of the Congress party is nevertheless dominated by the Maratha community.
In the last thirty years, however, Shiv Sena and the BJP began gaining a foothold in the state of Maharashtra, especially in the urban areas such as Mumbai. The Shiv Sena was formed in the 1960s by Balashaheb Thackerey, a cartoonist and journalist, to advocate and agitate for the interests of Marathi people in Mumbai. Over the following decades, the Shiv Sena slowly expanded and took over the the then Bombay corporation in 1980s.The original base of of the party was working class Marathi people in Mumbai and other urban areas.Shiv Sena and the BJP came into the power at the state level in 1995, which was a big blow to the INC. A split emerged within Shiv Sena Bal Thackeray anointed his son Uddhav Thackeray as his successor over his nephew Raj Thackeray in 2006. Raj Thackeray then left the party and formed a new Maharashtrian party, Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS). Raj Thackeray, like his uncle, has also tried to win support from the Marathi community by whipping up anti-immigrant sentiment in Maharashtra, for instance against Biharis.
The BJP is closely related to the RSS and is part of the Sangh Parivar.The party originally derived its support from the urban upper castes such as brahmins and non-Maharashtrians.In recent years the party has been able to penetrate the Maratha group in by fielding Maratha candidates in elections.
After the Maratha-Kunbi cluster, the Mahars are numerically the second strongest community.Most of the Mahars are followers of Buddhism and fall under the scheduled caste (SC) group.Since the times of Dr. Ambedkar, the Mahar community has supported various factions of the Republican party of India (RPI).There are 25 seats reserved for SC.Other parties like NCP, BJP and the Congress field candidates from other Hindu SC groups like Mang and Chambhar in the reserved seats to thwart the candidates of the RPI.
2014 Assembly Election
The 2014 election was highly significant as it followed important new developments. All the major parties, including the INC, the NCP, Shiv Sena, the BJP, and the MNS entered the election with all guns blazing to show their power in the assembly elections. The BJP was buoyed by their landslide national victory in the 2014 Lok Sabha election, which brought the iconic Narendra Modi to power as prime minister. Shiv Sena and the BJP entered a war of words, as did Congress and the NCP, leading to a complex and much-contested election. The results were highly significant in that the BJP received the highest number of seats despite being historically smaller than Shiv Sena in the state. Although the BJP still required Shiv Sena's support to form a majority, it progressed from a minor party in state politics to the party of the chief minister.