Why Raj Thackeray is so important, at all?

The efforts by Bharatiya Janata Party leaders seems to have bore mixed fruits in
Maharashtra, the western state of India, as Maharashtra Navnirman Sena chief Raj
Thackeray announced Sunday to contest some Lok Sabha seats in the state. While
announcing this decision, the fiery leader also made a statement to support BJP's Prime
Ministerial candidate Narendra Modi for his bid to the top post of the country.
The BJP leaders' desperation was showing off after failing to accommodate Thackeray in
the grand alliance of opposition parties in the state, called Mahayuti. The usually
expressive leader of the eight-year old party showed no signs for days of inclination
towards either the grand alliance nor against it. As in the past, he made it clear to fight
solo against both ruling Congress-Nationalist Congress front and the opposition
Mahayuti, possibly looking to make a place for himself as the main opposition party after
the Assembly elections in Maharashtra which are slated just six months down the line.
It was former national president of BJP, Nitin Gadkari, who first met Raj at his residence
Krishna Kunj in Dadar and later claimed that he urged on the former to refrain from
contesting Lok Sabha elections. Then Vinod Tawade, former BJP state president and
Sachin Shelar, another functionary, met Raj. This was supposed to avoid any possible vote
diversion in the non-Congress parties, paving way for the maximum number of
candidates of the Mahayuti to get elected to the parliament and thus make it possible for
Modi to ascend the throne.
The question is: why Raj Thackeray has become so important at all for the leaders of a
national party to go to his door time and again and beg to him not to jump in the fray? If
BJP's ally partner Shiv Sena is miffed and see this as the violation of the ethics of
alliance, it has right to feel so.
Was not the same Raj Thackeray subject of ridicule and hate just six years ago when rode
on a popularity wave thanks to his pro-Maharashtrian and anti-UPites and anti-Bihari
tirade? Was not his electoral merit questioned and he was termed just a political
scarecrow? Was not he was made out to be a big goon and his party a melange of bullies?
Did not he attract and continues to attract hate from all north Indians regardless of what
ideology they have?
But the two subsequent elections in 2009, for Lok Sabha and state Assembly, saw MNS
candidates cutting largely the vote share of Sena-BJP alliance's vote. The municipal
elections two and half years later proved even more deadly as MNS tasted power in
Nashik and Dombivali municipal corporations while it replaced Sena-BJP alliance as
opposition party in the Pune Municipal Corporation.
Whether MNS will be able to repeat this feat is an open question. But BJP leaders in
their desperation to get each and every LS seat in the state have started appeasing MNS.
Moreover, in the absence of Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray, who passed away in November
2012, the BJP leaders are even wary of the clout which Bal Thackeray's son and the
executive president, Uddhav, enjoys among voters. So it is small wonder to see such
personalities of national stature dropping by at Raj's residence.
Thackeray's latest decision is bound to leave them, as also the ruling front, more
perplexed. But the salvo has been fired and it is now seen whether MNS proved its mettle
in yet another electoral test in Maharashtra.