Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Devendra Fadnavis’ decision of giving the post of Maharashtra’s Chief Minister to rebel Shiv Sena leader Eknath Shinde has lent a twist to the State’s political crisis worthy of a thriller, while baffling predictions of political pundits.
In one stroke, Mr. Fadnavis, by not choosing to be Chief Minister himself, has checkmated the Uddhav Thackeray-led Sena camp by not only making a Shiv Sainik the new Chief Minister, but deflecting the opprobrium that the BJP had toppled the tripartite ‘Maha Vikas Aghadi’ (MVA) government by instigating the revolt within the Sena.
The move has undercut the ‘moral legitimacy’ accrued by Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray, whose emotional addresses of the past week had won him sympathy among large sections of the public after the Chief Minister plaintively spoke of being “stabbed in the back by his own partymen” while being ironically supported by his MVA allies, the Nationalist Congress Party and the Congress – who have otherwise been the Sena’s traditional ideological rivals.
