Onwards and upwards!: Post-EC Sena order, BJP sees road clear to half-way mark in Assembly

The man who suffered the most from that “betrayal” — as the BJP saw it – was then incumbent chief minister Devendra Fadnavis. And as the wheel comes full circle, with Uddhav now having lost power and his party, Fadnavis can take the credit for steering its course.

Though the BJP has repeatedly said its alliance with Eknath Shinde, now the leader of the official Shiv Sena and the Chief Minister, is intact and there is no question of fighting separately in 2024, Deputy CM Fadnavis is seen as holding the reins of both the government and the alliance. It’s anybody’s guess whether this is likely to change in the coming days.

Sources close to Fadnavis, not a leader known to take slights lying down, assert that he took the 2019 desertion by Uddhav personally. He reportedly said, “It was not about losing the CM post as much as about a friend’s betrayal… Chot dil mein lagi hai (It’s a blow to the heart).”

So, ever since the hastily compiled Maha Vikas Aghadi of the Sena, NCP and Congress came to power, the BJP never gave up looking for the weak links. Initially, the party tried to persuade the Sena to return to the NDA fold, harking on their common Hindutva cause. When that didn’t materialise, the BJP struck via Shinde, a long-time Sena loyalist.

The Thackerays were caught napping as an operation was rolled out from Mumbai to Gujarat to Assam, taking away as many as 40 MLAs from the Sena side, in the middle of 2022. Uddhav lost power, was left fighting off charges of having diluted Balasaheb’s Sena by aligning with the Congress, and of having proved doubters right as an “ineffectual” inheritor of his father’s legacy.

And now has come the blow of losing the Sena symbol and name as well, to the “usurper” Shinde.

Barely hiding their glee, BJP leaders say they see the party’s target of “150 seats” in the 2024 Assembly polls within reach. With the Shinde Sena, they hope to take the tally past 200 in the 288-seat Assembly.

In the 2019 Assembly elections, the BJP had fallen short of its expectations by getting 105 seats (a fall of 17 from 2014). While it was the single-largest party, this was way short of the half-way mark of 145, and had not proved enough to retain power once the Sena walked away.

The party thinks it can do only better than 2018, as it was constrained then by its alliance with the Sena, which had for long “dwarfed its organisational growth in more than 125 seats”.

Initially, the BJP would contest 117 seats in the state, and the Sena 171. While the BJP moved up from there, the Sena always retained an edge as the big brother.

In 2014, when seat-sharing disputes led the Sena and BJP to contest separately, the BJP won 122 seats and the Sena 65 – also seen by BJP circles as proof of its growing strength vis-a-vis Sena. They had later come together to form the government.

In 2019, the two forged a pre-poll alliance as part of which the Sena contested 124 seats and the BJP 164. While the BJP won 105 (a strike rate of 64%), the Sena got 56 (a much-lower winning percentage of 45%).

While there is no denying the BJP’s rise in Maharashtra, its long-running regret has been that it has never made it to the half-way mark on its own in the state. It has formed the government twice before, both times in partnership with the Sena – in 1995 and 2014. Its third stint in power, starting last year, was also brought about only after breaking the Sena.

BJP leaders say Fadnavis has told party ranks not to get complacent, start working for 2024, and to keep the larger picture in mind. Sources talk of a two-pronged strategy: consolidation of the BJP’s own electoral base to take up its 2019 tally to 150; and shouldering the Shinde Sena too, to ensure more Sainiks cross over and break the umbilical cord with the Thackerays.

The alliance with Shinde also serves the purpose – for now – as the Maratha leader helps the BJP counter the established leadership of the Congress and NCP in the sugar belt of Western Maharashtra. The rest of the work, it believes, will be done by Fadnavis’s push, the Narendra Modi government’s lasting popularity, and the Centre’s rewarding schemes.