“An empire toppled by its enemies can rise again but one that crumbles from within, that’s dead. Forever.”
The Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) comprising of the unholy alliance of Shiv Sena-Congress-NCP last week completed 100 days in power. The century stand might look good for optics but it has been riddled with all kinds of political compromises and ideological idiosyncrasies. With Jyotiraditya Scindia’s ultimate play to ditch Congress and join the BJP fold and successive resigning of rebel MLAs, the Kamal Nath government is on shaky grounds and it’s a matter of time until he has to hand over the keys of the government to the BJP.
Following the developments of MP, the trifecta of parties in Maharashtra is on a high alert as a similar rout is waiting to happen in the state.
Sensing the danger looming, NCP chief Sharad Pawar called a meeting of all his legislators last evening. Although the official statement for the meeting released said that it was held to discuss the party’s strategy for the Rajya-Sabha elections but the meeting assumes certain significance considering the political crisis in MP. There are speculations that similar ‘Operation Lotus’ can be adopted by BJP in Maharashtra.
The writing is on the wall and if one looks at how things have panned out between the parties in the alliance, a breakup is inevitable. Last month, strong fissures emerged within the MVA alliance when Shiv Sena supremo defied the will of Sharad Pawar on two major issues- the National Population Register (NPR) exercise and the Bhima Koregaon case.
There were reports about the Uddhav Thackeray led Maharashtra government stating that it had no objection in NIA taking over the Bhima Koregaon probe.
The Bhima Koregaon case is close to the NCP, which has been strongly pushing for withdrawal of prosecution against some of the prime accused. The Sena chief has however snubbed Pawar strongly by consenting to the NIA probe instead.
After being vociferously against building detention centres in the state of Maharashtra the Uddhav Thackeray government, at last, decided to go ahead with the construction of detention centre. Sena’s alliance partner NCP is against deportation of illegal Bangladeshi immigrants and the trouble ensued on the matter again.
After Maharashtra’s minority affairs minister and senior NCP leader Nawab Malik announced 5 per cent quota for the Muslim community of the state, the Shiv Sena leaders denied any such decision by the tri-party alliance government. The stark differences and disagreements between the two parties is evident from their conflicting messaging on this matter and it reflects the deepening fissures in the alliance as well as the inefficiency of the government.
“Only a matter of time. I predict in Maharashtra too Hindutva will reign united soon,” veteran BJP leader Subramanian Swami said. Interestingly, Swami had predicted the current situation in MP nearly two years back.
Shiv Sena leader and loudmouth Sanjay Raut on Wednesday expressed confidence that his party-led Maharashtra government is safe and said the “Madhya Pradesh virus” will not enter the western state.
But Raut is seemingly ignoring is the fact that there is near zero compatibility in the ideological positions of NCP and Shiv Sena, yet the party allied with the so-called secular forces in order to quench its thirst for power which has made it bow down on its hard-hitting Hindutva ideology.
After the state Assembly polls in October last year, the Shiv Sena-led MVA government came to power on November 28 after it parted ways with the BJP over the issue of sharing the chief ministerial post.
Sonia Gandhi and her party thought they pulled a coup in Maharashtra by stealing Thackeray but the recent bolt out of the blue in MP might have Madame worried that the domino effect has started and Maharashtra could be the next target.
Maharashtra might have been a hard pill to swallow for BJP but things have kept getting worse for the MVA alliance since then. BJP just needs to play the waiting game now and strike swiftly when the opportunity presents itself. The reversal of guard in MP could not have been scripted better and as things stand another script for Maharashtra is already in the works.
