'A frog cannot become an elephant'

“However much a frog may inflate itself, it cannot become an elephant.”

That colourful insult was directed at Maharashtra chief minister Eknath Shinde by BJP's Rajya Sabha MP Anil Bonde known to be very close to deputy chief minister Devendra Fadnavis. 

Shinde's faction of the Shiv Sena retaliated by releasing a second advertisement that today carried pictures of the five MLAs said to be very close to the chief minister who the BJP has been targeting as corrupt and hinting that they will be dropped from the government at the next cabinet reshuffle, thus standing by the men who are said to have been principally responsible for helping him to break away from Uddhav Thackeray.

Shinde started this war of words with the BJP with an earlier advertisement that showcased a survey — unsourced as yet — that proclaimed he was only slightly less popular than Narendra Modi. There was no mention of Fadnavis, his deputy and former chief minister. The ad which said, ‘Modi for the Centre and Shinde for the state’ clearly brought to mind Fadnavis’s own past propaganda — ‘Upar Narendra, neeche Devendra’ that had had other BJP leaders, including Union home minister Amit Shah, see red for proclaiming himself second only to Modi.

Why Wednesday’s ad becomes significant, sources say, is because Shinde seems to have been egged on by Shah who has always been opposed to Fadnavis and his ambition — else he would not have dared to take on the state BJP in this manner.

“Shinde is very close to Shah and keeps in touch with him almost every other day,“ veteran political analyst Hemant Desai told National Herald. “We believe this is Shah cutting Fadnavis down to size, rather nipping in the bud his ambition not just to become number two at the Centre but also to become chief minister again before it gets out of hand. Shinde wouldn’t dare do this without Central approval.”

The rift between the Shinde Shiv Sena and the state BJP has been apparent for quite some time now. But the trigger for it to burst into the open was a resolution passed by the Thane-Kalyan-Dombivli unit of the BJP a couple of weeks ago that they would not be helping the SSS at the Lok Sabha elections next year.

That hit home directly, for Shinde’s son Shrikant Shinde is the MP from that constituency and he said the BJP  was practising selfish politics and offered to quit his office rather than have anything to do with the BJP.

But there is a genesis to the growing rift. A BJP office bearer in Kalyan-Dombivli allegedly molested a woman who had been sitting in dharma at a police station seeking justice. Eknath Shinde then ordered a case registered against that office bearer and the situation got complicated with the BJP local leadership saying it was up to Fadnavis and not Shinde to order an investigation, thus bringing to fore the age-old conflict between two allies, including the Congress and Nationalist Congress Party, since 1995 when the CM was divested of the Home department to give equal powers to the “junior” ally as home minister. Fadnavis had put an end to the practice in 2014 and retained the home department  but he chose not to allow Shinde that privilege during the formation of this government.

“This ‘double engine’ arrangement is causing a lot of issues between Shinde and Fadnavis and that is manifesting itself in several ways with Shinde sore that Fadnavis gives the impression that he is a mere puppet of the BJP when, in fact, the chief minister has the powers over all other ministers,“ says Abhay Deshpande, veteran journalist and analyst who has studied the two parties closely over the years. “Expect this battle to continue until the elections.”

However, it was not just the molestation case — startlingly, a couple of weeks ago, the Shinde Shiv Sena and the local BJP leaders in Thane got into a poster war with each other with the former pulling down the latter’s hoardings and the two sides coming to actual blows with each other and drawing blood  in a style very worthy of Bal Thackeray’s Shiv Sena. Since then the war between them has only escalated with BJP leaders reminding Shinde that Thane is not Maharashtra and that Uddhav Thackeray had made the same mistake of equating Mumbai with the state.

But there is also a battle here for credit and one upmanship. The SSS is reminding the BJP that it was their patriarch Bal Thackeray  who gave them a foothold in the state and even the current dispensation in Maharashtra  would not have been entrenched in Mantralaya had it not been for Eknath Shinde. The BJP  retaliated by stating that Shinde could never have made the chief minister’s office without Fadnavis’s maneuvering and the SSS owes him for stepping back from the chief minister’s office and allowing Shinde precedence.

However, Desai says, Shinde is a Maratha and Maharashtra is the domain of Marathas. Particularly after the Maratha reservations issue, Fadnavis is unlikely to make it back to that office as the top BJP leadership is aware of the conflict between them and Brahmins in the state. “It was an exception when Fadnavis became  chief minister but with the consolidation between NCP  and Shiv Sena (UBT), the BJP will never risk alienating this community which has a 32 per cent voter base in the state. That is why these days they are making a big show of c3lebrating Chhatrapati Shivaji’s coronation which they have not done before. The message is to both Shinde and Uddhav as well as the NCP — you may be Marathas and your party may be named after Shivaji but we own him, too.”

Deshpande says there is a suggestion gaining ground in the state BJP as well that Fadnavis, who cannot tolerate any competition or playing second fiddle to anybody should be moved to the Centre. “And that too is  adding to his anguish. Whatever statements coming from BJP leaders are being made at  his behest by his supporters and that is causing problems within the state BJP, too. Expect this to continue until the elections.”

According to both Desai and Deshpande, the BJP believes Shinde has no other choice but to stick with them. With Uddhav claiming 22 of the MLAs with Shinde and nine of his MPs are getting restless and raring to return to the original party, Shinde has been backed into a corner and has little options before the polls. But until then he is chief minister and HD is unlikely to cede space or authority to Fadnavis and the state BJP

This internecine war is thus unlikely to end soon.