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Journalism of Courage
The anointment may have taken a few days, but Devendra Fadnavis has looked the picture of a man in control since the November 23 Maharashtra results made the scale of the Mahayuti’s win evident. The face of the BJP campaign in the state, he has been sharing pictures with the string of winners making a beeline to his home, posting news reports highlighting his role, and highlighting items on the prophetic lines he spoke in the past predicting that he would be back.
One that quickly caught the imagination was something Fadnavis said after a government forged by him with Ajit Pawar in 2019 fell within 80 hours. “Mera paani utarta dekh, mere kinare par ghar mat basaa lena. Main samundar hoon… laut kar waapas aaonga,” Fadnavis had said, drawing an analogy with the rise and fall of tides to say that his decline was temporary. “I will be back, like the ocean.”
Fadnavis himself invoked another prediction of his to say he had proved that he was like Abhimanyu, who had penetrated the Chakravyuha laid by his enemies.
However, his five years in power (2014-19) and the five years since of trying to stay there mean that Fadnavis knows the time for grand narratives is over. Now that the chief minister’s post is categorically his, the next stage will begin of managing a three-sided coalition and its different power centres.
In 2014, the state BJP president at the time, Fadnavis, all of 44, had been a surprise choice by the Modi-Shah duo for Maharashtra. Having won its highest seats in the state till then, 122 – the BJP surpassed it this time, at 132 – the party had formed the first government headed by it in the state then.
Narendra Modi, who had led the BJP to a big win at the Centre earlier that year, dropped enough hints that Fadnavis was their man. During the campaign, he described Fadnavis as “Nagpur’s gift to Maharashtra”. Fadnavis’s Nagpur origins and his family’s close ties to the RSS meant there were few roadblocks in his selection.
In the high of that performance, any misgivings about not doing the expected and picking a Maratha for the CM post were pushed aside. The Shiv Sena, which for the first time found itself in a junior role to the BJP in the state, was brought around after long discussions on the young Fadnavis’s ability to take along allies and senior leaders whose CM hopes had been thwarted.
His relative youth also made some question if Fadnavis had the experience to run a big state such as Maharashtra, with old warhorses in the Congress and NCP waiting in the wings to see him fumble.
The biggest point in Fadnavis’s favour was his clean and credible image as BJP chief – not something to be easily dismissed in resource-rich Maharashtra.
Once in power, Fadnavis proved his detractors wrong on most fronts.
A Make In India Summit held under his government saw Maharashtra sign 2,603 MoUs worth Rs 8 lakh crore, involving investments in automobile, electronics, infrastructure and agro-industries sectors.
In 2018, a ‘Magnetic Maharashtra’ event saw investment promises amounting to Rs 12 lakh crore across sectors, including real estate, gems and jewellery, aerospace and defence.
Says senior BJP leader and former finance minister Sudhir Mungantiwar, “Under the BJP government, Maharashtra got a big boost in domestic and foreign direct investments. It consolidated its leadership position in the country in FDI as well as industries.”
Fadnavis also showed political deftness in handling the Maratha reservation issue, which first gained clamour during this time. There were multiple rallies and reports of suicide, with sources saying that a stressed central BJP even considered replacing Fadnavis at one point.
However, Fadnavis managed to get Maratha leaders on board for talks and his government passed a reservation Bill promising the community reservation under the Socially and Educationally Backward Classes category. This was later stayed by courts, but the fact that the Fadnavis government had got a Maratha quota implemented, even if briefly, and that a non-BJP government let it fall through in court, remained a credible defence for the BJP even in these elections.
That same shrewdness was seen at work when senior BJP leaders considered potential rivals of Fadnavis found themselves out in the cold. Eknath Khadse, a prominent OBC leader, had to quit in 2016 following land scam allegations. Vinod Tawde, another minister in the CM probables list, saw his portfolio list pruned of crucial departments, apparently due to his “mismanagement”.
By the time the 2019 Assembly elections came around, Fadnavis was the unparalleled No. 1 in the Maharashtra BJP, set to return as CM should the BJP win, and viewed largely as a popular CM and an able administrator.
His rivals saw a further downsizing, with Khadse, Tawde and Chandrashekhar Bawankule denied tickets in the Assembly polls.
BJP leaders say it is wrong to attribute all that happened to Fadnavis. “It was the Centre’s decision to deny tickets to Tawde and Bawankule. The state leadership had no role,” a source says, pointing out that while Tawde was subsequently given a role in Delhi, Bawankule was made state BJP president in 2021.
Tawde said at the time that he was grateful for being considered for general secretary, and saw it as a reward for his “patience and work”.
The second turning point in Fadnavis’s career came after the 2019 results, which ideally should have seen him back in power with the BJP and Shiv Sena together winning 161 seats, well clear of the majority mark. However, in the post-election negotiations that followed, the Sena led by Uddhav Thackeray claimed a pre-poll arrangement on sharing of the CM’s post.
The Fadnavis-led BJP would have none of it, and Thackeray chose to end the Sena’s off-and-on long partnership with the BJP. With 105 MLAs on its own, the BJP was left in the lurch.
The events that followed ended any lingering doubts about Fadnavis’s single-minded ambition. An early-morning swearing-in where he took oath as CM, with Ajit Pawar of the NCP as Deputy CM, stunned the state. Fadnavis looked set to return to power having engineered a split duping the Bhishma Pitamah of Maharashtra politics, Sharad Pawar. That government lasted only a little over three days as Ajit went back to his uncle, but five years later, it remains hard to say who took whom for a ride.
During the Maha Vikas Aghadi government (2019-22) that followed, Fadnavis faced some of his toughest times. The MVA government accused his regime of phone tapping of Opposition leaders, with charges raised in the Assembly. As part of their investigation, the police visited Fadnavis’s residence; the case eventually went nowhere.
Meanwhile, his claim notwithstanding that like a true karyakarta he was happy with his new role in the Opposition – “Power, posts come and go, but karyakarta is a tag that is constant and precious” – Fadnavis kept working to plot his comeback.
Finally, half-way into the MVA term, he struck by splitting the Shiv Sena – a sweet revenge for what he had dubbed as Uddhav’s “betrayal” in 2019. Not only did Eknath Shinde break a party synonymous with the Thackeray name, he also took away most of the Sena’s MLAs and MPs, giving enough numbers to Fadnavis to stake claim again.
However, to his shock and barely hidden resentment, the BJP high command got him to settle for a Deputy CM post in the new arrangement. Shinde, who faced a battle of credibility against Thackeray, was made the new CM to boost his stature. Staring at this “downgrade” to Deputy CM, Fadnavis expressed his desire to return to organisation work but was directed – reportedly by Union Home Minister Amit Shah – to continue in government.
Fadnavis struggled to come to terms with his new role, and at press conferences, often tended to speak on Shinde’s behalf.
Senior BJP leaders say that apart from the need to keep Shinde and his cadres happy, the BJP high command wanted to send a clear message of “downsizing of Fadnavis”, who was seen as flying too high.
By the time Fadnavis weaned away Ajit Pawar again to split the NCP a year later, with a big chunk of the party moving with him to the BJP side (in a repeat of the Sena episode), the Deputy CM had settled in. There were not many whimpers from Fadnavis’s side as Ajit became a co-Deputy CM and even got the Finance portfolio that Fadnavis had held.
But testing times began for Fadnavis again after the 2024 Lok Sabha polls earlier this year, in which the BJP got just nine seats, down from 23 in 2019. Along with Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra contributed the most to the BJP’s overall tally sliding below the majority mark at the Centre.
Fadnavis reportedly again offered to resign from the government and dedicate himself to party work. Shah, however, again rejected it and asked him to continue in the Shinde-led government.
Says BJP spokesperson Shivaray Kulkarni, “Fadnavis has always put the organisation above everything. So, he then took upon himself the responsibility of ensuring victory for the BJP-led Mahayuti. The Assembly results are proof of his Mission Maharashtra.”
Even Fadnavis’s critics acknowledge the work he put in after the Lok Sabha results – touring the state non-stop – to raise the morale of a dejected party. The 54-year-old held 75 rallies, covering all the 36 districts of the state across the past five months.
State BJP chief Bawankule, once seen as sidelined by Fadnavis, says: “We are fortunate to have leaders like Modi-Shah at the Centre and Fadnavis in Maharashtra, who have inspired and led the organisation to great success.”
BJP leader Shrikant Bharatiya, poll strategist and MLC, says the fact that the party won 132 seats is not a surprise in light of the efforts put in by party leaders. “When it comes to hard work and sincerity, Fadnavis leads by example. He takes up challenges and delivers results.”
One of the first halts of Fadnavis after the big win was Nagpur, his home town and RSS headquarters. His father Gangadhar Fadnavis, who died when Fadnavis was just 17, was also close to the Sangh and an MLA. Union minister and fellow Nagpur resident Nitin Gadkari, who hosted Fadnavis after the results, talks of Gangadhar as his “guru”.
Trained as a lawyer, a profession that was reportedly his first choice and not politics, Fadnavis started out with RSS student wing ABVP, and later contested Nagpur corporation elections and became one of the country’s youngest mayors at the age of 27. In 1999, he contested his first elections and won – and never looked back, winning his sixth Assembly term this time.
His mother Sarita Fadnavis, who stays on in the family home, spoke after the results about how Fadnavis barely slept over the past few months. “His success is a result of hard work, which has been his strength, and his unwavering commitment.”
It’s another close family member who Maharashtra is set to hear more of in the coming days: Fadnavis’s wife Amruta, a banker-cum-social worker whose rising profile, as a singer-performer, is in many ways as remarkable as her husband’s.
