If in less than a year, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) needed to break up another political party in Maharashtra, despite having adequate numbers in the Assembly, then it says much about the uncertainty of its leadership than about its prospects in the state.
Clearly, Eknath Shinde and his band of 40-odd MLAs have not brought the BJP the electoral returns it expected. Uddhav Thackeray did not collapse and fade away as they had hoped. And Shinde was unable to consolidate the Shiv Sena voters as they had planned.
Moreover, the Speaker of the Maharashtra Assembly must decide by 9 August on the disqualification of the Shiv Sena rebels, and by law, they would indeed have to be disqualified.
The BJP clearly needed a buffer between themselves and all the other disadvantages they are faced with. Hence, it explains taking on Ajit Pawar and his band of 30 MLAs, many of them who are not known to be his supporters and were until 2 July, Sunday, fierce Sharad Pawar loyalists.
However, each one of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) ministers sworn in has a corruption charge against themselves and their singular priority is to keep themselves from going to jail.
Sharad Pawar’s Bid for Opposition Unity: Political Strategy or Fightback?
In the manner in which politics is unfolding in India today, Sharad Pawar seems to have made up his mind about which side he is on, taking up a lead role in forging an opposition unity against the BJP. He had been under pressure for nearly nine years from the likes of Praful Patel, former Union Civil Aviation Minister, with charges of misappropriation in deals with regard to Air India during the UPA regime, to ally with the BJP, once the Congress went out of power in both the state and the Centre.
Bitterly opposed to him were leaders like Jayant Patil, Maharashtra NCP President, and Jitendra Awhad, just declared leader of Opposition in place of Ajit Pawar, to stay the course as a secular party. Pawar’s own fierce commitment to secularism and socialism prevented him from joining hands with the BJP beyond a point. The NCP men, thus, had no choice but to break away in order to save their own skins.
Why large sections of people remain confused about Pawar’s role in the break-up is because of his calm reaction to Sunday’s events, almost as though he was expecting them. Given that he never allows his left hand know what the right hand is doing, many political observers are convinced that he had to have given a nod to the break-up even if he did not actively encourage it. Or even try to prevent it as Uddhav Thackeray had done during the Shiv Sena split.
But seeing how he hit the streets less than 12 hours after the swearing-in of his nephew and others in a determined bid to rebuild his party with a set of new and squeaky-clean supporters, there are those who say Pawar’s gung-ho attitude is not because he encouraged the break-up but because he is always best at fighting with his back to the wall and he loves nothing better than hitting the campaign trail with the purpose of winning and proving all his critics wrong.
Ajit Pawar’s Exit: A Win-Win?
Sharad Pawar's euphoria could also be because this rebellion and the exits of the party stalwarts also clear the path and pave the way not just for a younger lot of leaders but also for his daughter Supriya Sule. He had recently appointed her as the working president of the NCP but there were enough NCP stalwarts, many of them his loyalists and opposed to Ajit Pawar, who preferred to deal with his nephew rather than his daughter.
This rebellion now gives him an opportunity to build a new team under her leadership and accord an active role to his favourite great-nephew Rohit Pawar. Ajit had been upset that his own son Parth Pawar was not being given enough importance within the party and deferring to that sentiment Rohit had quietly stayed in the background hoping to ruffle no more feathers. But with Ajit now out of the party, Rohit can step into his shoes and Supriya continue with a larger role at the centre as Pawar had originally planned for Ajit and her.
However, even if the BJP inducted the NCP out of compulsion, it cannot be a happy situation for them. Barring Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, there is no one in the BJP who can challenge the NCP’s hold on the bureaucracy. Fadnavis himself will be unable to treat either Ajit or any of his men as a puppet, the way he did with Shinde and his faction of the Shiv Sena which was causing a lot of unrest among them.
BJP’s Overplaying Its Hand Amid NCP Stronghold
The BJP's restlessness is likely to multiply manifold given that those hoping to get a place in the cabinet will now have to continue sitting on the sidelines. They may even choose to now opt out of the government and many of them return to the mother party.
But if the BJP hoped they would make up the deficit with the NCP vote bank, they were perhaps misinformed. The reason why there was such a struggle like in the NCP over allying with the BJP was because their vote bank is fiercely socialist-secular.
Any hint of a saffron tint and the NCP would have to bite the dust. Then again describing themselves now as a triple-engine government only hands Uddhav a stick to beat them with for his government was taunted as a three-legged one and when the party split, the reason given was his unholy alliance with the Indian National Congress and the NCP.
And they may have once again grossly underestimated Sharad Pawar. Fadnavis has been wont to describe him as an old man past his prime. But Pawar seems to be in his element having now decided to go to the people's court rather than a court of law to prevent the takeover of his party.
As a political observer said, "People in Maharashtra love a fighter and they love a victim.”
Sharad Pawar is now both. As is Uddhav Thackeray.
(Sujata Anandan is the Consulting Editor of National Herald, Mumbai. She tweets @sujataanandan. This is a an opinion piece, and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)
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