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.
