As many would know, recently, there was an addition to India’s political playboy mansion, by which I mean that a politician who recently abandoned his own, and his party’s long worshipped ideology of Hindutva, is now seen monkey-balancing his blunder.
Uddhav Thackeray, who took oath as Maharashtra’s Chief Minister in November last year after a month of political muscle-flexing in the state, has, in all likelihood now come to realize that he may just have scripted the beginning of his political career’s end. Uddhav was in Delhi on Friday, and he met Prime Minister Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah and interim Congress President Sonia Gandhi.
Uddhav Thackeray first called upon PM Modi along with his son, Aaditya Thackeray. Here, it is believed that PM Modi made all apprehensions of Uddhav regarding CAA, NPR and NRC vanish. Speaking to media, Thackeray said, “We discussed CAA, NRC and NPR (National Population Register). I have made my stand clear on these…There is no need to fear the CAA. The oppressed minorities will be benefitted. The central government has said NRC will not be implemented across the country. If we see any dangers befalling the citizens, we will oppose it then.”
He also called upon Amit Shah and Sonia Gandhi. It is believed that the discussions of Sonia Gandhi and Thackeray did not come anywhere close to CAA and NRC, in a bid to prevent an awkward situation.
Coming to the crux of the matter, Uddhav Thackeray is a political Casanova at best, who overestimates his skills in this particular field too. Uddhav Thackeray, off late, has been hallucinating of a larger than life image of himself, which he indeed does not harbour.
His betrayal of the BJP in October last year was evidence enough to convince people that the man had no loyalties, and was ready to sell his integrity to just anybody who would make him or his son the Chief Minister. Being the hyenas that the NCP and the Congress are, they were more than willing to extend the Shiv Sena with the said courtesy.
Now all has not been going as per the plan in the Maha Vikas Aghadi. While the NCP and the Congress thought that Uddhav would merely be a dummy CM, to their surprise, he is now asserting his position as the same. This is definitely not going down well with the alliance partners. In a bid to keep his options open, and also to perhaps scare the NCP and Congress, Uddhav visited PM Modi and Amit Shah yesterday. This was a plain and simple attempt to make his alliance partners believe that the Shiv Sena and BJP are still very much in talking terms, and if the NCP and Congress were to abandon the Shiv Sena, it would effortlessly sail back to power with the BJP.
The only problem here is that the BJP has not forgotten Sena’s betrayal, and a result of the same has been an open statement by JP Nadda that the saffron party will fight the next state election alone, whenever they are conducted. Therefore, Uddhav might just be overestimating his ability to bed anyone he desires, at any given moment of his choosing. Uddhav crossed a threshold in November last year, from where there can be no going back.
Uddhav Thackeray is also trying to project himself as a major regional satrap, who can pose a formidable challenge to the BJP. He might just be comparing his might to that of Nitish Kumar’s. In comparison to Kumar, however, Uddhav Thackeray is a noob. Whatever seats the Shiv Sena won in the October elections last year were courtesy the seamless vote transfer which the BJP facilitated from its voter base to the Shiv Sena’s mediocre candidates. Nitish Kumar, on the other hand, has a humongous organic voter base of himself in Bihar. The same cannot be even minutely said about the Shiv Sena in Maharashtra.
Uddhav Thackeray has to realise that contrary to his belief, nobody is falling for his pseudo-political charisma, certainly not the BJP. He has scripted his decimation in politics, and nobody is willing to ferry his sinking ship towards emancipation.