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MUMBAI, India — When Arun Garde set out to sell vada pav, the popular street snack of a potato patty in a bun, in south Mumbai in November, the city government closed down his stall before his fourth customer had finished eating. Mr. Garde, 50, watched in horror as his booth, utensils and supplies were thrown into the back of a truck because he was hawking without a license.

A month later, Mr. Garde was back at the same spot near a taxi stand, happily frying potato fritters at a kiosk branded with the name of Shiv Sena, the Hindu nationalist party that dominates the capital of Maharashtra State, and painted saffron, the party’s color. In exchange for a free kiosk and the party’s patronage, Mr. Garde had rebranded his vada pav as “Shiv vada pav.”

Since he struck the deal, Mr. Garde has not been fined by the municipal corporation of Mumbai, which is run by a Shiv Sena majority.

“The Shiv Sena is helping Maharashtrians like us,” Mr. Garde said. “So we should also help them by voting for them.”

With one month left before voters in the western state of Maharashtra go to the polls, Shiv vada pav stalls and carts have quietly expanded in neighborhoods that have large Maharashtrian, or ethnic Marathi, populations, like Girgaum, Shivaji Park and Dadar. Under the Shiv Vada Pav program by the Shiv Sena, Marathi people are provided kiosks and handcarts and assistance in obtaining city licenses to sell the street snack. While the party had also announced that it would train Maharashtrians to make vada pav, the plan was later dropped.

The party, which demands preferential treatment for Marathi people over migrants, introduced the Shiv Vada Pav initiative in 2009, before the last national elections, as a way to provide employment to Maharashtrian youth and elevate the vada pav, a uniquely Mumbai snack, to a global symbol of local pride. At the time, Uddhav Thackeray, then the party’s executive president, boasted that the Shiv vada pav would compete with McDonald’s and KFC.

This election season, however, the Shiv Sena is playing down its program, said Harshal Pradhan, head of Shiv Sena’s research and development department, because of the opposition it drew from Mumbai residents when it was first announced.

Hygiene concerns were cited in a 2009 public interest lawsuit filed by a citizens’ group in the Bombay High Court against the Shiv Sena program after the city government began issuing 125 licenses to these vendors. The lawsuit also argued that the Shiv vada pav handcarts and kiosks would make the sidewalks even more crowded and would violate Supreme Court guidelines on street food and no-hawking zones.

The Bombay High Court ruled in favor of the Shiv Sena after the city government reassured the court that the program would abide by the rules. Since then, the party has continued to set up snack stalls and kiosks, but Avkash Jadhav, Shiv Sena’s city government nominee to oversee civic activities, acknowledged that a number of Shiv vada pav stalls remained unlicensed.

“It is a very tedious process. While stall owners are encouraged to seek licensing permission from the wards, some of them eventually give up,” he said.

Mr. Pradhan emphasized that Shiv Sena was committed to following the city’s rules. “The party cannot be faulted for encouraging entrepreneurship among Marathi youth,” he said. “Sena leaders in each neighborhood try to help acquire licenses, but the process is slow and complicated.” He declined to disclose how many vendors the party had helped.

Mr. Pradhan may have been reluctant to talk about the party’s work with vada pav sellers, but Dilip Katke, a building contractor who is hoping to land a spot on the Shiv Sena ticket in the assembly elections, had no such qualms. The new wave of street food stalls showed how the party took care of its people, he declared.

“This party thinks like a caring mother,” he said while sitting in his all-white air-conditioned office in suburban Mumbai and sporting a saffron scarf around his neck.

“We can see that Mumbaikars are always in a hurry,” he added, referring to the residents of Mumbai. “They may not even have time to eat lunch, and not everyone can afford to buy a big, nice pizza.”

And like a good mother, the party looked after the public’s health, he said. “With this scheme, we can control the vada pav’s price and make sure it is produced hygienically.

“Anyone can eat vada pav for as little as 10 rupees without risking their health, as our people are given gloves and caps,” he said.

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The party may provide gloves and caps to its vada pav workers, but enforcement appears to be spotty. At Harish Kanu Gorivale’s Shiv vada pav stall in the Grant Road neighborhood, a mound of boiled potatoes was being kneaded with bare hands and mixed with chiles, garlic and curry powder.

As Mr. Gorivale coated the inside of a bun with chutney and stuck a potato fritter inside, a cloud of flies hovered over a tray of hot patties. Beside his stall was an overflowing dustbin and a dirty cloth on which his customers wiped their hands.

Nitesh Rane, son of Narayan Rane, the minister for industry, ports and employment in Maharashtra and a Congress party member, criticized the Shiv Sena for an election-year expansion of a program that operated without licenses. Mr. Rane blamed the city government for allowing it to happen.

“The same thing had happened before the municipal elections in 2012,” said Mr. Rane, who runs a nonprofit called Swabhiman Sanghatna, which focuses on youth issues. Back then, Swabhiman Sanghatna introduced its own unlicensed stalls selling what it called the Chhatrapati vada pav, named after the warrior king Chhatrapati Shivaji, and dared the city government to shut them down while it allowed the similarly unlicensed Shiv Sena vendors to operate.

“Shiv vada pav stalls are illegal and do a disservice to Marathi youth,” he said. “It is a way to keep them low in the socioeconomic ladder. How many people in Mr. Thackeray’s family are encouraged to start vada pav stalls?”

Illegal or not, plenty of people appear to be eager to enter the street food business. Outside Mr. Katke’s office, two men, both barefoot, waited to meet him. One wanted help resolving a dispute with his neighbor over a water connection, and the other wanted to apply for a Shiv vada pav stall.

“See, we are helping people, getting them jobs while giving every Mumbaikar his favorite food,” Mr. Katke said.

Mansi Choksi is a freelance journalist based in Mumbai. Follow her on Twitter @mansi_choksi.