MUMBAI: The meat ban row has stirred the pot of vote bank politics, what with the BJP and Shiv Sena making dire attempts to consolidate their community strongholds in Mumbai in the run-up to the 2017 BMC elections, political experts said on Friday.

While the BJP grabbed the opportunity with both hands to woo the Gujarati-Jain-Rajasthani voters by asking the BMC to shut down the civic abattoirs for four days during the Paryushan Parva of the Jain community, the Sena and its off-shoot, the MNS, tried successfully in the case of the latter, to win over Marathi Mumbaikars, thus distributing the city's political terrain along community lines.

“Don't step into my kitchen,” Sena president Uddhav Thackeray's one-liner which he hurled at Mumbai BJP president Ashish Shelar at a function in Jogeshwari on Thursday had the latter running for cover. Quick to realise that the party had an egg on its face because of its ill-thought meat ban crusade, Shelar, who, it is learnt, loves his chicken tikka, urged the Sena to bring down curtains on the row. “The controversy has reflected poorly on the party's leadership. We failed to handle the crisis with tact and political wisdom,” admitted a senior Mumbai BJP functionary.

Many in the BJP are of the view that in the aftermath of the meat ban crusade, the party stands to lose a large chunk of Marathi votes. “Plus, the MNS will hereafter portray the BJP as a party of Jain builders and Gujarati traders,” he rued, adding, “A section of Marathi voters will take it out on us in the 2017 civic elections.”

Although Shelar heads the Mumbai BJP, the party is seen to be under the thumbs of non-Marathi functionaries such as Mangal Prabhat Lodha and Raj Purohit. Purohit has said that he would ask for a similar meat ban by the BMC on Ganesha Chaturthi, Gudi Padwa, Dussera and Diwali. “The party leadership doesn't realise that we need to handle other Mumbaikars with velvet gloves due to Mumbai's cosmopolitan character,” said the BJP leader.

Citing the Bandra assembly constituency as a test case, he said, “Last year, Ashish-ji (Shelar) won from Bandra where Muslims and Christians have a good voting percentage. However, the meat ban crusade has surely displeased members of the two communities and I have grave doubts if they would be with us in the 2017 civic polls.”

The Shiv Sena-BJP partnership coincided with the Hindutva wave of the 1990s. “Balasaheb Thackeray and Pramod Mahajan cemented the 'dhokla-kebab' alliance with dexterity,” said the BJP leader. But with Narendra Modi's advent on the national scene, cracks began to appear in the Sena-BJP alliance, resulting in the break-up of the poll partnership in the 2014 state assembly elections. A large section in the Sena thinks that the BJP began to play the Gujarati-Jain card following Modi's ascension to power.