As Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) turned down the Governor’s invite to form the government in Maharashtra on Sunday, an old video clip of its senior leader, the late Gopinath Munde, started doing the rounds. In this clip, recorded ahead of the 2014 state Assembly elections, Munde, then a Union minister, was asked whether he or Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray would be the next chief minister (CM) of the state if the BJP-Shiv Sena government came to power. He had answered that he had “no issues” if Thackeray got the top post as he would be the “CM of the entire saffron alliance”.
Five years down the line, the saffron alliance is nearly dead.
In the days to come, if BJP, as the single largest party, is forced to sit on the Opposition benches in the Maharashtra Assembly, its failure to concede the CM post to its ally for two-and-a-half years and just communicate better, is going to haunt it. There is no love lost between the saffron allies, but several BJP leaders admit privately that it would have been a better option to concede the top post for two-and-a-half years, than lose it for all five years.
However, senior BJP leaders also said the party had no option but to throw the ball in Sena’s court. The core committee of senior state leaders on Sunday met twice at Varsha, the caretaker CM’s residence, before arriving at the decision to back out. The decision, party insiders, said, was taken after consultation with the Delhi leadership, which was not in favour of conceding the CM post or pacifying Sena after repeated criticism. Besides caretaker CM Devendra Fadnavis, the party’s state unit chief Chandrakant Patil; senior leaders Vinod Tawde, Pankaja Munde, Ashish Shelar, Girish Mahajan; and BJP’s Maharashtra in-charge Bhupendra Yadav were present for the meetings. “We didn’t really have an option as we don’t have the numbers and we don’t want to indulge in horse-trading. Our top brass is confident that Congress will not support a Sena-led government and even if it does, that government will not last. If Sena can’t prove its majority, there will be President’s rule and that gives us enough time to garner support,” said a senior leader.
The leader said that during President’s rule, which could last for months, Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) could be convinced to back their government like it did in 2014. In such a scenario, the leader said, it was also possible that a section of Sena may prefer to align with BJP than stay with the party.
Not all think it’s wise to give the Opposition a second lease after marginalising them in the past five years. “It would have been better to concede the CM post for two-and-a-half years as Sena is our natural ally. Sena was willing to accept even the latter tenure. While many of us are confident of getting NCP’s backing, there is no reason why Pawar should back us now. And, even if he does, it will come at a heavy cost,” said a senior party leader.
