Maha debacle: What next for Fadnavis, Ajit Pawar, Shinde?

There is something about the month of June and Maharashtra. Warrior king Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, who is revered like a god across the state, was coronated on June 6, 1674. In June 2022, Eknath Shinde pulled down the Sena-Congress-NCP government when he split the Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena, founded in Mumbai on June 19, 1966. He then joined hands with the BJP and became the chief minister of the new government.The rumblings in the Sharad Pawar-led Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) began in June 2023 when Ajit Pawar, unhappy with his uncle’s decision to not retire, began skipping party meetings citing poor health.On July 2, he joined the Sena-BJP government as its second deputy chief minister, taking along a large chunk of MLAs and MPs. And now, in June 2024, voters have handed a shocking defeat to the Sena (Shinde)-NCP (Ajit)-BJP combine. Their numbers are so poor that Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, the architect of both Sena and NCP splits, has offered to resign.The Lok Sabha results – which show that the two splits Fadnavis engineered may have done more harm to the BJP than good – have brought to a semi-closure the tumult in Maharashtra politics that started when Shinde left for Assam with 34 Sena MLAs and six independents. The tumult intensified with Ajit Pawar splitting the NCP.One is using the term ‘semi-closure’ because the state is due for assembly elections and nearly all municipal corporations – including Mumbai and Thane – are also due to for polls. These elections will finally decide who commands the real Shiv Sena and who helms the real NCP. It will also decide where BJP stands in Maharashtra.But that will be then. For now, let’s look at where their abysmal Lok Sabha performance (see graphic below) leaves the three key players -- Fadnavis, Shinde, and Ajit Pawar. !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var e=document.querySelectorAll("iframe");for(var t in a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var r=0;r Devendra Fadnavis, 53The man left standing at the center of the big mess medium nocaption110826010Imagine a CEO of a struggling company who goes to the Board of Directors and convinces it that all will be well if he was allowed to acquire a rival company. The Board sanctions the funds.Just months after this acquisition, the CEO stands before the Board again and says the acquisition didn’t do the trick, but he could make it all work if he was allowed to acquire another company. The Board sanctions the funds.Just weeks before the Annual General Meeting (AGM), where the CEO would have to present the results, the CEO goes to the Board again. On this occasion, he seeks permission to part invest in a third company, saying that is the only missing piece. The Board, now desperate, sanctions more funds.The AGM days arrives. To everybody’s utter shock, the results are very, very poor. There are losses everywhere. The CEO now has no option but to offer to resign. This CEO is Devendra Fadnavis. The two companies he acquired are Shiv Sena and NCP. The third company he invested in is Raj Thackeray’s Navnirman Sena. The struggling company he heads is the BJP-led Mahayuti (the equivalent of NDA) in Maharashtra.While reasons will be eventually assigned for the defeat – Maratha agitation, the “mischievous” Constitution-is-in-danger narrative, and poor selection of candidates – the truth is Fadnavis has got nobody else but himself to blame for this mess.Till he switched on the revenge mode after losing power in 2019, he had everything going for him.He was only the second Brahmin chief minister the state, dominated by Marathas, had seen.Of the two Brahmin CMs, only he had completed a full term. Manohar Joshi had to make way for Narayan Rane, a Maratha, mid-way.More significantly, he was one of the only two chief ministers in the history of Maharashtra to complete a full term. The only other being Vasantrao Naik.He was, backed by the RSS, believed to be being groomed for a juicy central ministry and, eventually, the top post.He had age on his side too. But then everything went awry in 2019, when Uddhav Thackeray ditched NDA and began flirting with the NCP and the Congress.Fadnavis, incensed by Uddhav’s “disloyalty”, split the NCP and was sworn in as chief minister with rebel Ajit Pawar as his deputy at a closely-guarded ceremony at 8 am at Raj Bhavan. medium110826032The government lasted all of 80 hours. A sheepish looking Ajit Pawar returned to his uncle’s house and days later was sworn in as deputy chief minister in a Congress-NCP-Shiv Sena government.The early morning swearing-in and the disappointment that followed was, perhaps, the beginning of Fadnavis’s decline. All his moves after that have gone wrong. And June 2024 appears to be his lowest thus far.“Devendra Fadnavis will be made a scapegoat by his Delhi bosses for the loss in the state. A message will be sent out to the others as well that even if you are as powerful as Fadnavis, if you mess up elections, you will not be spared,” said writer and political analyst Ambarish Mishra.Did Fadnavis let his ego dictate his decisions? Is BJP weaker in Maharashtra than it was in 2019 before Fadnavis began wooing Shinde?Only Fadnavis can answer the first question and we will get the answer to the second in October when assembly elections take place.What next for Fadnavis: While his offer to resign is being countered by some voices calling for “collective responsibility,” undoubtedly there is, and will be, pressure on him to make way for somebody else. It will be, in all likelihood, a Maratha who will replace him.Fadnavis will have to work very hard to change the narrative that he damaged the party’s prospects in the state. He will have to answer the following charges:By importing leaders from other parties, did he weaken the position of the party’s own leaders across the state?His decision to get Ajit Pawar to join the NDA was perhaps the most disliked. BJP had spent years battling Ajit Pawar and levelled serious charges of corruption against him. Now they were suddenly being forced to defend him.Uddhav’s Sena, Sharad Pawar’s NCP, and the Congress were able to convince voters that Fadnavis was too keen to give away to Gujarat projects that would have brought prosperity and jobs to Maharashtra.He will also have to find a counter to accusation that he did not deal well with the Maratha agitation for reservations. When Maratha leader Manoj Jarange-Patil broke his fast, Fadnavis did not even accompany Shinde to Navi Mumbai to thank him.Fadnavis was also not able to counter INDIA’s narrative that the BJP will change the Constitution.Eknath Shinde, 60The man who saved NDA the blushes medium nocaption110826038With a strike rate of nearly 50%, Eknath Shinde turned out to be the best performer of the three.However, his performance does not match the advantage his claim of heading the ‘asli Sena’ should have given him.The undivided Sena, helmed by Udhav Thackeray of which he was a part till 2019 when he split it, had 18 MPs. Shinde has only seven.Uddhav, who lost his party, symbol, and a horde of MLAs and MPs, has nine, though his strike rate at 42.5 is poorer.So, that leaves the question of ‘asli, nakli Sena’, as mentioned earlier in this report, open till the October assembly elections.Shinde, with his seven MPs, will hold a position of strength when he sits down for seat negotiations with the BJP and Ajit Pawar’s NCP.The fact that Shinde Sena is BJP’s third largest partner in the NDA after TDP (16) and JDU (12) will also weigh in his favour.What is also heartening for Shinde is that some of his candidates registered wins outside the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR), belying the impression that his influence is restricted to Mumbai and areas around it. His candidates not only won one of the six seats in Mumbai and scored victories in Thane and Navi Mumbai, they were also victorious in Aurangabad (Marathwada region), Buldhana (Vidarbha region), Maval (western Maharashtra) and Hatkanagle (western Maharashtra). medium110826057What should worry him, though, is his performance in Mumbai, which has been Shiv Sena’s stronghold for decades and is home to the country’s richest municipal corporation. He contested three seats opposite Uddhav Thackeray-led Sena in Mumbai and won only one, that too with a wafer-thin margin of 48 votes.In 13 seats, which saw a straight Sena vs Sena fight, Uddhav’s Sena won 7 and Shinde 6.“This was the first major election for Shinde to prove that he commands the following of Shiv Sena cadre and its committed voters. He has fallen short there,” said Surendra Jondhale, political analyst.What next for Shinde: There wasspeculation that Shinde could be dropped from the CM’s post before the assembly elections. His party’s performance has quashed that possibility.In fact, if he does well in assembly elections, he could lay claim to a second term now.His challenge before the assembly elections would be the polls for Mumbai municipal corporation. Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation or BMC, as it is called, has had an administrator running it for over two years in the absence of elections.Shinde, in all probability, will maintain the status quo because a loss in Mumbai could reflect poorly on him and impact his prospects in the assembly elections.Ajit Pawar, 64The man who lost the most medium nocaption110826075His performance in the Mahayuti (NCP-Ajit + Shinde Sena + BJP) has been the worst. He was allowed to contest only five seats and won only one.But worse, he lost the prestige battle of Baramati to his uncle Sharad Pawar and his daughter Supriya Sule with a surprisingly large margin of over 1.5 lakh votes. That robbed him of any bragging rights too.The loss of face was such that he deputed Praful Patel to represent the party at the post-poll NDA meetings in Delhi.At his own meeting in Mumbai to discuss the results and to dive right back into planning for assembly elections, five MLAs were missing.There has been speculation since that a bunch of MLAs both in Shinde’s Sena and Ajit’s NCP want to return to Uddhav and Sharad Pawar’s camps respectively.Is Ajit Pawar regretting his decision to break the party his uncle established, given the fact that while he took a substantial chunk of MLAs with him, the ground support seems to have stayed with his uncle?We will have to wait till assembly elections results come in to get an answer.Ajit Pawar made the mistake of talking about his uncle’s age and calling it the latter’s last election. Prime Minister Narendra Modi calling Sharad Pawar ‘bhatakti aatma’ too may have gone against him.But what must have really riled him is the sight of the entire Pawar clan, including his own brother, standing with Pawar senior in the election in Baramati. medium110826085His old tactics of intimidating voters too seemed to have failed. For instance, a traders' meeting called by senior Pawar was canceled at Ajit Pawar's instructions.Pawar has been on shaky ground since 2019 when he briefly joined Fadnavis as Deputy CM for 30 hours.In 2019, his son Parth failed to win from the Maval constituency in the united NCP, and now in 2024, his wife couldn’t secure victory despite his extensive efforts. These defeats raise questions about Ajit Pawar's leadership without his uncle’s support.According to senior journalist Advait Mehta, who has been covering Baramati politics for more than three decades, “Ajit Pawar has the same clock (NCP symbol) but less time to face the challenges following the Lok Sabha debacle.”He also said that Ajit Pawar’s image is his biggest enemy. “Unlike Shinde or Fadnavis, Ajit Pawar faces corruption allegations, which cast him as a tainted imported leader in MahaYuti. This diminishes his and his candidates’ chances of garnering support from other party members within MahaYuti,” he said.Mehta said his influence within MahaYuti has diminished now. “While Shinde secured seven seats and protected his bastion in Thane, Ajit Pawar failed to do so, weakening his bargaining power within MahaYuti despite having the support of 40 MLAs.”With the inclusion of Raj Thackeray and his Maharashtra Navnirman Sena, MahaYuti now has a fourth claimant for seats in assembly elections.What next for Ajit Pawar: As he begins preparing for assembly elections, Ajit Pawar will have to constantly look over his shoulders to if MLAs are deserting him.Chhagan Bhujbal, one of his party’s senior most leaders, has been unhappy because he was allowed to contest from Thane. The seat went to Shinde’s Sena. If he, or somebody of his heft, leaves, Ajit Pawar will not have enough time to recover for the assembly elections.A lot of MLAs, who left NCP with him, will now ask whether he can get them elected when he could not get his son and wife elected.There may be pressure on the BJP to dump him and shore up its image. That is an additional pressure he must deal with.If there is one politician who can turn this adversity into an opportunity it is Ajit Pawar. He has experience and deep connections with workers and voters in western Maharashtra. The question is – does he have enough time?