Girish Kuber writes on Maharashtra drama: BJP’s strategy is Pawar vs Pawar

This is perfectly in accordance with the BJP’s style. First weaken Opposition leaders by leveling charges of misappropriation of funds and later bring the same leaders into its fold.

Yet another en-masse migration from an Opposition party to the BJP is hardly surprising. Nevertheless, the brazenness with which it was carried out in Maharashtra has stunned the establishment. The final verdict in last year’s Shiv Sena split is still awaited. Exactly a year ago, the BJP fatally wounded the Shiv Sena by taking away its legislative wing, lock, stock, and barrel. The prolonged battle ended in the Supreme Court lobbing the ball into the Speaker’s court. And before the Speaker could decide, there’s one more on his plate.

The tearing hurry the BJP has displayed in engineering yet another split shows its desperation. Not that the support of Ajit Pawar and company was needed for the Eknath Shinde led-government’s stability. The real reason lies in the forthcoming parliamentary election. After a year with Shinde, it has dawned on the BJP that former Sena men may not give the expected political dividend. This realisation has in all probability prevented Shinde-Fadnavis from carrying out their first cabinet expansion even after a year. This may also be the reason the government has been delaying elections to over 200 municipalities and 23 large municipal corporations, including Pune and Mumbai.

The BJP needed to fill the gap, and there was Ajit Pawar, ever willing to cross the fence. He has felt humiliated within the party and outside it for his past failures, especially the one in 2019, when his early morning escapade with Fadnavis backfired. His second attempt this May also ended in a whimper when Pawar Sr stumped him by announcing his decision to step down as party chief. Since then Ajit was waiting for the right moment.

Ajit has been a problem for his uncle since 1999, when Pawar Sr founded the NCP. He was perennially sulking in the NCP since the party chief kept him away from all key posts. And he was always denied key posts because of his scant regard for the party. Unlike his uncle, Ajit is short on temperament and vision. Pawar Sr is always measured and calculative, Ajit has been far from being cautious. Pawar Sr triggers awe, while Ajit invariably sets off fear.

Knowing Ajit’s temperament, the BJP, for long, was angling for him. The BJP’s plan was simple: Get Pawar Jr to beat Pawar Sr. For the BJP, Sharad Pawar continues to be the last hurdle in its quest to control Maharashtra. With this in mind, it overlooked Ajit’s vulnerability, especially his role in the alleged irrigation scam. The irony is that it is this scam that laid the foundation for Devendra Fadnavis’s aggressive political campaign in 2014.

Fadnavis consistently attacked Ajit and his colleagues in the NCP for the alleged scam. And yet, the point to be noted is that though Fadnavis made much hue and cry, there was very little effort to bring the accused to justice when he became chief minister after the 2014 elections. The only decision the ill-fated Fadnavis-Ajit Pawar combination took in 2019 was to absolve the latter from the alleged scam. Incidentally, all of Ajit’s key accomplices in the NCP who were under BJP attack, have joined the Fadnavis-Shinde government.

The BJP conveniently decided to overlook the alleged misadventures of Ajit Pawar and company because it is aware how crucial Maharashtra will be to a continued dream run at the Centre. The BJP is singularly focused on the parliamentary election since it has mastered the art of “managing” states even without a mandate. For the 2024 general elections, the BJP feels uncomfortable in many states other than UP and Gujarat. This explains the urgency to break the NCP.

In doing so, the BJP has successfully stolen from the Sharad Pawar book his tactic of killing many birds with one stone. Ajit Pawar’s breaking away not only weakens the NCP, it also puts Eknath Shinde on stand-by mode, besides raising a big question mark over Opposition unity. Shinde was beginning to look too comfortable in the saddle, and the Shinde faction’s supposed antagonism towards the BJP’s local cadre didn’t help. His perceived direct access to the BJP high command in Delhi had also left the state leadership red-faced. Also, Shinde’s team lacked the gravitas required to run a state as large as Maharashtra. The BJP desperately needed some experienced hands. Thus came in NCP veterans who were inducted in the cabinet Sunday afternoon.

This, however, is bound to rattle the Shiv Sena team that walked out of the Uddhav Thackeray camp alongside Shinde. All were promised ministerial berths and/or “lucrative” corporations. But except the few who were sworn in on June 30 last year, everyone was left in the lurch. Their wait just got prolonged with the NCP veterans getting precedence. It can’t be more ironic for the Shinde camp to find Ajit Pawar on their side yet again since it was he, as a finance minister in the erstwhile Shiv Sena-NCP-Congress government, who was the bone of contention in the Sena camp. Shinde and his MLAs had criticised then chief minister Uddhav of ceding too much space to Ajit Pawar.

This opens chinks in the armour of incumbent alliances and places the political dispensation on slippery ground. It’s not unrealistic to expect a few more defections, albeit in the reverse direction, if political winds change ahead of the next election, and if Ajit Pawar and company walk away with the bigger pie leaving Shinde and his men high and dry. The final act of this theatre of the absurd is yet to be written.

girish.kuber@expressindia.com