The day Nationalist Congress Party leader, Ajit Pawar, was sworn in as the deputy chief minister in the Eknath Shinde government last month, the BJP broke up the Maha Vikas Aghadi coalition in Maharashtra. By decimating the Shiv Sena first in June 2022 and the NCP exactly a year later, there is only the third constituent of the MVA – the Congress Party – which is holding the baton of the Opposition in the state. The MVA coalition, which was considered to be a strong opposition to the BJP, is now in pieces. While former chief minister and faction head of the Shiv Sena, Uddhav Thackeray, is trying to hold on to the MLAs who support him from being poached, NCP chief Sharad Pawar is caught up trying to rebuild his party after the defection of his nephew, Ajit Pawar, along with 40 NCP MLAs.
According to political analysts, the MVA, with its constituent parties, has been increasing its footprints across the state. “The BJP had to break up this coalition as it was quite a potent one,” says Suchit Limaye, political researcher. “Though strong, they all had different ideologies. There was no single ideology to hold them together. In that sense it has been a fragile combination right from the beginning,” says Limaye.
The breakup of the MVA has been easy, say many, as disgruntlement was a strong sentiment amongst the constituents. From ministerial berths to the allocation of funds, the constituents fired salvos at each other showing their displeasure in public. A Congress delegation had met then chief minister Uddhav Thackeray over the allocation of funds by then Maharashtra Finance Minister Ajit Pawar. The Congress Party leaders had on many occasions expressed anger at being sidelined in the bonhomie between Pawar and Thackeray. Both these leaders would hold private meetings, often late into the night, keeping the Congress party leaders out of these meetings.
The Congress, which is now in revival mode after the break-up of the MVA, plans to go solo in all the elections in the future, according to Nana Patole, the state chief of the Congress Party. Even when the party was a constituent in the erstwhile MVA government, Patole was loud on the “going it alone” factor.
In the 2019 elections, the Shiv Sena and the BJP then unified, fought as an alliance. They talked of Hindutva, a sentiment that got them the people’s mandate. When the Shiv Sena joined the Congress and the NCP, who had diverse ideologies and vehemently opposed Hindutva, to form the Maha Vikas Aghadi government in Maharashtra, the Shiv Sena cadre was in a fix. Supporters of Hindutva, anti-Congress and anti-NCP, the Shiv Sainiks were unable to explain to their voters the new political alignment.
There was unease between the Congress and the NCP too. The Congress party leaders lacked strong bargaining skills to get plum departments and budgetary allocations, as Pawar was driving the MVA alliance.
Though the trigger of the MVA crisis was the cross-voting in the elections of the Maharashtra Legislative Council by a section of the Shiv Sena who were opposed to the leadership of Thackeray, in later days of the fall of the government, Saamna – the mouthpiece of the Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) blamed Patole for the crisis.
Patole, who was the Speaker of the Assembly, had hastily resigned from the post leaving it vacant until the fall of the government. Deputy Speaker (NCP) Narhari Jirwal had been handling the Speaker’s duties since Patole quit.
The Uddhav Thackeray faction felt that had Patole been in the Speaker’s chair, the crisis of defection by senior leader and minister (now the incumbent chief minister) Ekanth Shinde with 40 MLAs of the Shiv Sena could have been tackled. It would have been easier for the rebel MLAs to be disqualified. The Maharashtra Governor Bhagat Singh Koshyari, who had shared an uneasy relationship with Thackeray, had not allowed the Speaker’s election until the fall of the MVA Government. The differences between Patole and senior Congress Party leader Balasaheb Thorat (who was the state chief before Patole), had quit as a member of the Legislative Council, blaming his decision on the “unilateral functioning of Patole”. Both leaders – Patole and Thorat – continue to have their differences and that has adversely impacted the Congress Party in Maharashtra.
During the Covid-19 months, Devendra Fadnavis, then Leader of the Opposition, had made multiple trips to Raj Bhavan and held lengthy discussions. For Fadnavis, sliding to the Opposition benches despite being the single largest party in Maharashtra, had been a huge blow. The breaking up of the MVA was a craftily conceived plan put into action in phases. While the break up of the Shiv Sena was first on the agenda, the NCP came next. The BJP and the breakaways of the NCP studied the Shinde versus Thackeray case and the verdict of the Election Commission and the Supreme Court before Ajit Pawar switched loyalties from his uncle Sharad Pawar to Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Ajit Pawar had referred to both the verdicts – Election Commission and the Supreme Court – during his maiden press conference as a leader of the breakaway NCP faction.
According to reliable sources, the BJP has trained its sights on breaking up the Congress party in Maharashtra. A large section is disgruntled. There is also talk about the BJP negotiating with a sizeable number of Congress Party MLAs, including a former chief minister of the state. The disgruntled in the Congress party is driving a hard bargain for ministerial berths and heavyweight departments. However, with Eknath Shinde’s inability to accommodate the aspirations of the MLAs of his faction and the MLAs of the NCP, the BJP may find it difficult to break up the Congress Party.
According to a senior Congress party MLA, there is no point in rushing to the BJP side if there will be no gains. “Right now, we are MLAs. The chief minister has no ministries to offer us. If we have to just be MLAs in another faction, then what is wrong in being where we are now?” says the leader.
