Shinde & deputy

With Fadnavis as deputy CM, the BJP will be the main driving force of the new governing arrangement in Maharashtra. The loss of an important state, along with Mumbai, the country’s financial capital, was something it was evidently desperate to reverse, and Shinde’s rebellion gave it the opening. Uddhav Thackeray was wise to read the writing on the wall and step down as chief minister ahead of a floor test the MVA coalition was certain to lose. The day after, he will have to confront the reality that it was not the break up of an “unlikely” alliance, but of his own party that led to the unravelling of his government. Going ahead, his challenge will be to reclaim the Shiv Sena legacy and reassert the Thackeray stamp on it at a time of an identity crisis in the party. On his last day in office, he tried to reiterate his Hindutva credentials by renaming two major cities. The state is now likely to see a competition between players to emerge as the real flagbearer of Hindutva. The question will also be: Which is the real Sena — the Mumbai-centric rump left with Uddhav Thackeray, or the one that is now with Shinde? With the Mumbai corporation elections ahead, and the BJP certain to go into mission mode to take charge of the country’s richest civic body, the Thackerays’ task is cut out. What might work in their favour, or not, is that the Uddhav Thackeray-led government could not be accused of misgovernance. Mumbai emerged as a model city for Covid management as the former chief minister, a first timer in public office, steered the state through the pandemic with a steady hand.

Governor Bhagat Singh Koshyari, who granted Fadnavis’s request for a floor test without losing any time and with apparently no consideration of the petition before the Supreme Court on the disqualification of the rebels, has invited unflattering attention to his office yet again – the Supreme Court’s refusal to stay the floor test pending the disposal of the disqualification case also raises questions. The infamous 2019 secret swearing-in of Fadnavis at the Raj Bhavan in an attempt to pre-empt the post-election MVA coalition, and the friction-filled relationship thereafter between Koshyari and Thackeray, had already made the governor’s stance controversial. Now the circumstances of the fall of the government and installation of a new one have once again revived concerns about the high constitutional office and its insulation, or lack of it, from the political establishment.