The tussle over the Chief Minister’s post led to the break up of both the BJP-Shiv Sena and Congress-NCP alliances ahead of the October 15, 2014 Maharashtra Assembly polls.
The development was not unexpected given the fact that the BJP and the NCP, which were junior partners in their respective alliances, were uneasy over the dominance of the Shiv Sena and the Congress respectively.
The appointment of Prithviraj Chavan, as Maharashtra Chief Minister less than four years ago, was described by a senior Congress leader as an “experiment” based on his experience in the hope that it would galvanise the party.
But the way Mr. Chavan went about the task resulted in annoying many of his own partymen and also the the NCP and its top leader in the State Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar, say observers.
“How can a government function when the Chief Minister and the Deputy Chief Minister are virtually not on talking terms and plotting against each other,” said another senior Congress leader.
As regards the Shiv Sena and the BJP, the ties were getting strained over the years with the BJP feeling that the Sena was not acting in the NDA spirit.
It is to be noted that the Sena twice voted against NDA’s Presidential candidates. It voted for “Marathi” Pratibha Patil and later for Pranab Mukherjee.
The refrain of the BJP leaders was that they were not getting the respect and warmth they deserved from the Sena leadership in the last few years.
The Sena was always the ‘elder brother’ in the saffron alliance with the BJP playing a second fiddle to the aggressive leadership of the late Sena supremo Bal Thackarey in State politics while it was the BJP occupying the prime place in national politics.
The BJP wanted a level playing field in the State in the wake of the spectacular performance by the NDA under Narendra Modi in the Lok Sabha polls.
The BJP was seeking a larger space in State politics in the changed situation which the the Sena under Uddhav Thackarey refused to yield and even gave enough indications about his desire to be the Chief Minister if the alliance wins.
The BJP’s late leader Pramod Mahajan was the architect of the alliance which he had fashioned along with Bal Thackarey to meet the challenge posed by the then dominant Congress in the State politics.
The Congress and the NCP were in alliance in the State for the past 15 years as they came together to share power, months after NCP chief Sharad Pawar parted ways with the Congress on the issue of Sonia Gandhi’s foreign origin.
In Mr. Sharad Pawar’s own words, “significant differences on critical issues” forced the NCP to take the “bold” step of ending the 15-year old alliance with the Congress in the State.
In a series of tweets, Mr. Sharad Pawar on Friday said, “I would like to say that there were significant differences between our party & Congress on various critical issues. Due to time constraint & other issues, we were compelled to take bold step to end 15 years of alliance with Congress in Maharashtra.”
While he did not elaborate on what were the critical issues, the NCP had pulled a rabbit out of its hat by raising the demand for rotational Chief Ministership at the last minute during the seat-sharing issue with Congress in Maharashtra.
NCP had sought Chief Minister’s post for half of the 5-year term if the alliance retained power. The formula was adopted by the Congress in Jammu and Kashmir sometime back with its then state partner PDP.
Supporters of Mr. Chavan were hinting for long that Mr. Ajit Pawar would not like the alliance to take place as he aspired for the top post.
Incidentally, the Sena is the second largest constituent of the BJP led-NDA while the NCP is the second largest party in the Congress-led UPA in the opposition.
While the Congress under the dominant Marathas had kept its hold over the State’s politics, the Shiv Sena-BJP alliance was essentially an OBC affair.
