The wheel has turned full circle. After nine days of high drama, five-star shifts from city to city and suspense by the hour, power returns to the old BJP-Sena combine, but with a difference. The baton will be wielded by rebel Sena leader Eknath Shinde, who proved beyond doubt that outgoing chief minister Uddhav Thackeray was no match to him. The decades-long hold of the Bal Thackeray family on Mumbai and Maharashtra has been shattered beyond doubt, with Uddhav falling by the wayside and his son Aditya too weak to call the shots in the near future. The BJP seized the initiative.
Naming of Shinde as chief minister and a stepping-aside of former chief minister Devendra Fadnavis formed part of a grand BJP strategy, even as the party held double the number of legislators compared to the Shiv Sena. This is the way to ensure stability for the new government in the remaining two years. The Shiv Sena (Balasaheb) led by Shinde can feel reassured and be in a dominant position, while the BJP legislators will pose no problem to the new government as long as the equations between the Sena (B) and the BJP remain good. Instead, if the BJP took the CM’s post now, there is every chance that a scheming Sharad Pawar of the NCP — a prompter and beneficiary of the 2019 break-up between the Shiv Sena and the BJP – would find it easy to topple the government. He has too much of filthy funds. With the Sena rebels getting more than what’s their due, they could now confidently project themselves as the real Sena. This meant the Uddhav Thackeray edifice could crumble like a pack of cards.
If the Shiv Sena led by Uddhav stabbed the BJP in its back after the 2019 polls, the BJP now gave it back in the same coin. There is little doubt that Shinde would not have come this far without backroom games from the BJP leadership, principally former chief minister Devendra Fadnavis. Fadnavis will now have to take the back-seat but this is not to under-estimate the hold of the BJP in the new power equations. Matoshree, the centre of the Sena edifice in Mumbai, always carried with it a huge aura among the Shiv Sainiks. It could now look like a haunted structure. Eknath Shinde, who started life as an auto rickshaw boy, has gained a lot of clout among the rank and file of the Shiv Sena in recent years. That may keep him in good stead at least for now.
