Mumbai: It has been over a week since the Mahayuti coalition received a clear mandate. However, the decision on who could be Maharashtra’s chief minister has yet to be made. At a late-night meeting on Thursday (November 28) in New Delhi, leaders of all three allied parties – Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Devendra Fadnavis, Shiv Sena’s Eknath Shinde, and Nationalist Congress Party’s (NCP) Ajit Pawar met with Union home minister Amit Shah. The meeting went on until midnight, but the leaders told the media that the decision was “almost finalised.”
Shinde, after the meeting, told the press that the decision on the chief minister’s and other posts would be made in Mumbai, but gave no clear indication of when.
The BJP, which has won 132 out of the total 288 seats – only 13 shy of a clear majority – is in control of who gets to be the next chief minister of the state. Shinde, who held the position for over two and a half years as a reward for breaking away from the Shiv Sena and taking most MLAs along with him, has also submitted to the BJP’s decision.
Two days ago, Shinde called for a press conference at his residence in Thane. In a lengthy monologue, almost like a scripted speech, Shinde told the press that as a part of the Mahayuti government, all he asks for is “a stable government” and has handed over all rights to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Shah to make the final decision. Having consented to be a part of the Mahayuti, he said that he has vested powers in the hands of the Delhi leadership to take further decisions. “I had a call with Modi ji and Shah ji and told them that when they are making any decision, they should not worry about me. I am in complete support of their decision,” he said.
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In the 20-minute discussion, however, Shinde didn’t once mention the Maharashtra leaders with whom he has a direct alliance and with whom he would be spending the next five years in government. His displeasure over having Fadnavis return as chief minister is now public, and with Ajit Pawar siding with Fadnavis, Shinde has been isolated in the equation.
The undivided Shiv Sena, which built its legacy on the leadership of party supremo Bal Thackeray, was never dependent on Delhi for decisions, Shiv Sena (Uddhav Thackeray faction) leader and Member of Parliament Sanjay Raut said. “Even when the party was in alliance with the BJP, decisions were taken by the party itself, not handed over to the BJP bosses in Delhi. And now that Shinde has repeatedly said this, it is clear that he has willingly handed over his autonomy to the BJP,” Raut said in Mumbai.
There is a noticeable change in the way Shinde has conducted himself since the election results. Even though his party performed well in the assembly elections (winning 57 seats), this pales in comparison to the BJP, which emerged as the single largest party in the state. In fact, the Shinde faction’s performance is better than the united Shiv Sena’s in the 2019 assembly elections, when they won 56 seats in the state.
NCP (Sharad Pawar faction) leader Supriya Sule said the situation in which Shinde has found himself feels like a “repeat of 2019.” “It is almost as if the clock has been turned back to 2019. The promises made then to Uddhav Thackeray and later broken are being repeated once again with Shinde,” she told the media two days ago.
The breaking of both Shiv Sena and the NCP was scripted and executed by the BJP. The manner in which the MLAs were transported to Assam and then to Gujarat, with the direct involvement of BJP leaders, made it evident that the BJP wanted the powerful regional parties in the state to be decimated. The disintegration of the two parties and the weakened leadership in the opposition has directly benefited the BJP in the state. The party has never formed a government in the state without an ally. But this time, if the party decides, it could very well drop the weight of the allies and take a few independents.
Meanwhile, some churning has begun within the Thackeray faction. The Mahavikas Aghadi alliance of Congress, Sharad Pawar-led NCP faction, and the Thackeray camp of Shiv Sena won 46 seats. Ambadas Danve, Leader of the Opposition (LoP) in the Maharashtra Legislative Council, stated that the MVA should have simply projected Uddhav Thackeray as its chief ministerial candidate, which would have helped swing at least 3-4% of votes toward the MVA. Danve, whose party managed 20 seats out of the 46 won by the alliance, accused the Congress of becoming “overconfident” in Maharashtra, “just as they became overconfident in Haryana and Jammu and Kashmir.”
In one of his interviews, Danve also claimed that a few party leaders (without giving away their names) are “concerned about the Thackeray Sena’s structure and future.”
In the Lok Sabha election, the Congress had secured 13 seats, marking a good comeback and a boost for the party both in the state and nationally. However, the party performed poorly in the state assembly, winning only 16 out of the 103 seats it contested. Sharad Pawar’s party also suffered, winning only 10 out of the 87 seats its candidates contested in the state.
