Chhote Mian could kayo Bade Mian

MUMBAI: Imagine Shah Rukh Khan or Hrithik Roshan feeling threatened by Kader Khan or Johny Lever.
That’s exactly what’s happening in Mumbai’s politics right now,with big parties like the Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) getting antsy about smaller organisations like the Samajwadi Party (SP), Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and Bharatiya Republican Party (BRP).
The big fish have reason to feel insecure. The small fry may seem to have no more than nuisance value, but they can cause big upsets in the final stakes on April 26—each vote cast in their favour will hurt the Congress or the NCP in that constituency.
For instance, the SP has a strong base among Muslims as do the BSP and BRP among Dalits— and both Muslims and Dalits form part of the vote bank wooed by the Congress and NCP.
Take south Mumbai. Congress candidate Milind Deora has been spending sleepless nights ever since the SP decided to field advocate Ameen Solkar and the BSP put up Aziz Lalani against him.
In the 1999 polls, Lalani, a businessman who fought on the SP ticket from south Mumbai, secured as many as 19,000 votes, thereby ensuring the defeat of the then Congress nominee Murli Deora. Murli Deora lost to Jaywantiben Mehta of the BJP by about 10,000 votes.
For more evidence of the ‘damage value’ of the small parties, zoom in on Mumbai south-central constituency. In 1999, SP’s Majid Memon polled 97,000 votes, second only to the Sena’s Mohan Rawle. In fact, between the SP and the BRP, the votes equalled those polled by the Sena.
The two parties got 1.75 lakh votes while the Sena got 1.76 lakh votes. This time around, the SP has fielded former IPS officer T K Choudhary. Most importantly, the party is banking on the fact that it lost the seat in re-counting by a mere 153 votes in 1998.
In Mumbai north-east, another advocate, S K Dubey of SP, will take on local heavyweights like Gurudas Kamat of the Congress and Kirit Somaiya of the BJP. Joining the queue in this constituency is the BRP’s lone ranger in the city, Raja Dhale.A well-known name in Dalit circles, Dhale is seen as a bother by the Congress because of the five lakh-odd Dalit votes in the constituency.
When Dhale had fought from the North-Central constituency in 1999, he had polled 1.25 lakh votes. He believes Mumbai north-east, with its sizable Dalit population from Mulund to Trombay, will choose him because “there’s no representation of their interests’’.