Politics | Shiv Sena is pushing the BJP to maximise its gains

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Sujata Anandan

Unlike in Haryana where the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) was in a minority after the assembly election results were declared, by now government formation in Maharashtra should have been a done and dusted deal. This is because put together both the NDA allies, the BJP and the Shiv Sena, have a comfortable majority in the 288-seat assembly.

However, in the piquant verdict both the BJP and the Shiv Sena won lesser seats than what they did in the 2014 assembly polls — in 2014, the BJP won 122 seats while the Shiv Sena won 63; this time, the BJP won 105 seats and the Shiv Sena 56. This leaves the national party strangely vulnerable to its regional ally’s blackmail.

This is similar to the tactics the Sena used in 2014 to put pressure on the BJP, which then overcame the crisis because of the ‘conditional support’ Sharad Pawar’s Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) had promised. This time it is unlikely to happen as the NCP, with 54 seats, has surged ahead of the Congress, which has 44 seats. So, sensing this as its best window of opportunity, the Shiv Sena is pushing to maximise its gains.

It has placed two options before the BJP, either of which if accepted is likely to push the BJP, at least temporarily, into a position of subservience to the Shiv Sena. The first of these is the latter's insistence on a 50-50 formula of sharing the office of the chief minister — the Sena either wants first crack at it or an assurance in writing from the BJP that it will make way for the party after two-and-a-half years. The second is an insistence on a change in chief minister (any one apart from Devendra Fadnavis) in return for which the Shiv Sena will drop all its demands and accept whatever the BJP has to offer.

Shiv Sena leaders know very well the BJP is unlikely to cede either, but in the unlikely event they do, in one stroke it would gain the upper hand and emerge senior partner without working for it any further.

However, its first demand is more fraught with danger than an opportunity for the Shiv Sena to expand its bases in the state. If the BJP were to concede chief ministership to the Shiv Sena right away, who would be the party’s CM candidate? Aaditya Thackeray, who was projected as a deputy chief minister during the election campaign, is a greenhorn to elected office and unlikely to be accepted by many senior Sena leaders who have been waiting patiently on the wings for a shot at the top job. Uddhav risks a split in the party with many of these seniors likely to shift allegiance to the BJP. If he mounts a senior as the CM, it instantly places Aaditya, the first elected Thackeray, in a subordinate position to his supporter and that is not to be countenanced.

So what the Shiv Sena is really pushing for under the guise of a demand for the CMO, is some better departments, most likely the home department for Aaditya as deputy chief minister and the all-crucial department of urban development for anyone having to deal with real estate and builders in Mumbai. In the previous government, both these departments were with Fadnavis and the only department of consequence that the Sena headed was industries.

If it is able to wrest the other two departments in pursuance of the formula first adopted by the saffron allies in 1995 and then the Congress-NCP from 1999 to 2014, they would at least be able to claim an equal partnership. That would be half the battle won for the next five years for its expansionist goals.

The Shiv Sena is also insisting on dropping Fadnavis as chief minister because its leaders, as well as some from the BJP, recognise that Fadnavis has mastered the technique of using government authority to neutralise political rivals. Sena leaders feel that Fadnavis succeeded in doing this with many BJP leaders and failed with them because last time the Sena was a reluctant ally which quite effectively kept up the role of an Opposition even while being in government. This time though the Sena being a pre-poll ally makes its position vulnerable.

A rattled Fadnavis has been insisting that come what may he will become chief minister again, and in all likelihood he will. That, however, does not stop the Shiv Sena from walking the sharp edge of the political precipice for this is the time for it to set the terms. For its political relevance, it cannot concede to the BJP again, and this kind of circling of each other is likely to be the norm for the future. The tiger is unlikely to change its stripes.

 Sujata Anandan is a senior journalist and author. Views are personal.