It is final. The bitterest tussle for Maharashtra ahead of the assembly polls is being fought without rival alliances’ projection of a leader, turning it into the first of such exercises.
Generally, the incumbent chief minister is projected or perceived as the chief ministerial candidate. But this time, amid the pulls and pressures of the alliances and the dominance of the national parties, no such thing is being done.
Chief minister Eknath Shinde of the Shiv Sena’s eponymous faction will be leading the ruling Maha Yuti to the polls and the alliance will make a decision on the state’s leadership after the polls if it wins them.
Suddenly, there is spring in the step of the BJP, which dominates the Maha Yuti, in the wake of the party performing an unexpected hat-trick in Haryana.
The projection of any leader is fraught with dangerous consequences with politics getting murkier by the day, making the situation more complex. It is a mad, mad, mad world in Maharashtra.
Only yesterday, former chief minister Uddhav Thackeray, whose Shiv Sena was a strong votary of the projection of a chief ministerial candidate by the opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi, virtually did a volte-face by challenging the Maha Yuti to first declare its face.
The Congress as also Sharad Pawar’s Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), which are the other partners of the opposition grouping, have always held that only the Aghadi is the ‘face’.
The state boasts of stalwarts like Y.B. Chavan, Vasantrao Naik, Vasantdada Patil and Sharad Pawar as chief ministers.
This time, it is difficult to predict who will become chief minister, though many are angling for the top post, which was once described as akin to the deputy prime ministership as Maharashtra is not just resource-rich but the wealthiest state in the country.
There are many imponderables in the polls this time, with several new factors including a possible third front expected to be in the fray – as are some other parties, including Raj Thackeray’s Maharashtra Navnirman Sena and Prakash Ambedkar’s Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi.
A schedule for the poll was announced hours ago. The election for the 288-member house will also be the first when six prominent parties including four regional ones are in the fray as part of rival alliances.
It will also be the first following the rollercoaster ride for Maharashtra in which two regional parties suffered a split. The BJP has admitted that it engineered the splits in the Shiv Sena and the NCP.
The tussle has become keen as the Maha Vikas Aghadi caused an upset for the BJP and the prime minister by securing 31 of the state’s 48 seats in the Lok Sabha polls, thereby denying a majority to the world’s largest party in parliament.
Deputy chief minister Devendra Fadnavis is the topmost leader of the BJP in the state and was chief minister for a full term from 2014 to 2019 after the party emerged the single largest in Maharashtra on the back of Narendra Modi’s emergence at the national level.
And deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar holds the distinction of being the longest-serving deputy chief minister in the history of the state. He is stuck there despite his ambition to be the chief minister. He blames his estranged uncle Sharad Pawar for his own failure to reach the top spot and the issue was one of the reasons why he split the NCP.
Coalitions have become the order of the day in the state, where the BJP and the Congress had contested on their own way back in 2014 without success. The BJP could secure 122 seats in the polls, but this was far less than the 145 majority mark.
The attraction towards the chief ministership of Maharashtra is bound to be there among rival political parties. After all, it is the wealthiest state in India.
Thackeray’s latest statement indicates that he has realised that getting bogged down in the issue of the chief ministerial candidate is not a wise strategy for the Maha Vikas Aghadi. It is a fatal trap that could tear asunder the opposition alliance that has virtually come near the winning post even before the polls scheduled for November. A misstep here or there will be catastrophic at a time when the Haryana victory has emboldened the BJP.
The Congress has been pitching against the projection of a chief ministerial candidate, as has Sharad Pawar, who felt it would be like playing into the hands of Modi-Shah. The Congress has emerged the biggest party in the Aghadi with 13 seats in the Lok Sabha.
Since it is long in the game, the grand old party realises that announcing a chief ministerial candidate is like committing hara-kiri. This will be more so in an alliance where attempts would be made to pull each other down during the polls to spite the chief ministerial candidate or his party. Thus, announcing a candidate would amount to giving up the game.
The failure of the Election Commission to announce the schedule along with that of Haryana reflects the nervousness in the Maha Yuti. The simple fact is that assembly polls in Maharashtra and Haryana were held simultaneously from 2009 to 2019. After the Haryana victory, Modi-Shah are expected to move heaven and earth to retain power amid heavy odds against them.
The BJP has become the prima donna of the politics of Maharashtra since Modi’s emergence on the national scene in May 2014. But the politics played by the prime minister and home minister Amit Shah in the past few years is pulling the party down amid stiff resistance from its detractors.
The Aghadi has been the hot favourite to win the assembly polls after its Lok Sabha poll performance, which came as a rude jolt to the BJP and its allies, who were reduced to just 17 seats as against 41 in 2019.
But the BJP under Modi-Shah is known to play till the last ball and its tenacity and tactics turn its detractors panicky. And now it is aware that the Aghadi’s morale is low following the Congress defeat in Haryana.
Sunil Gatade and Venkatesh Kesari are New Delhi-based journalists.
