BJP’s three year mission to dislodge Uddhav accomplished

Milind Dharmasena

New Delhi: It seems to be a mission accomplished for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Sangh Parivar with  rebel Shiv Sena leader Eknath Shinde  becoming  Maharashtra’s Chief Minister. The BJP and the Sangh Parivar  had always opposed  the Maha Vikas Aghadi, which  former  CM Uddhav Thackeray had  stitched together  with unlikely partners the Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party to form the government  in 2019, though the  BJP had emerged as the single largest party with 106 MLAs..

The BJP seemed  to have never forgiven  Uddhav for breaking away with whom it shared a love-hate relationship and was its idealogue partner. The BJP  was expecting to see a repeat of 2014 scenario,when  the party got the  highest  number of seats due to  Prime Minister Narendra Modi wave. The Shiv Sena was an alliance  in the  BJP run government in Maharashtra, when in 2017 Uddhav announced that  in future his party would contest the polls alone.

Shinde’s  rise in politics from an autorickshaw driver and a hardcore  Shiv Sena worker in Thane to  the Chief Minister’s post  is the fourth rebellion which the Shiv Sena  founded by  Bal Thackeray faced. Shinde grouse is said to be Uddhav’s style of functioning  which the former felt  was overshadowed by the Congress and the NCP with the Shiv Sena ideology getting diluted. 

After losing the opportunity to  form the government in 2019, the BJP had been relentlessly working to topple Uddhav’s government and a coup within the Shiv Sena led by Shinde helped it  to accomplish the mission.

It was BJP’s Devendra Fadnavis, the new Deputy Chief Minister, who managed to steer the rebellion towards an endgame for Maha Vikas Aghadi . The cross voting in the MLCs polls by MLAs of the alliance partners,  a day before Shinde revolted, was a pointer to the  downfall of  the Uddhav government.