Two sharks fight for a fish, but the third one runs away with it- It’s a well-known phrase, especially in politics. The current Maharashtra political tussle can be the best suitable understanding for this phrase. The scuffle between the MVA alliance and Uddav Thackeray’s Shiv Sena lays evidence for it, where Eknath Shinde took the MLAs and won the race.
Rise of Eknath Shinde and the decline of MVA alliance
On July 4, Maharashtra’s new Chief Minister Eknath Shinde won the floor test in the State Assembly. Amid the 288-member house, 164 MLAs voted in favor, while 99 voted against it. The congress party members, Ashok Chavan and Vijay Wadettiwar were among those who were absent during the trust vote.
The downfall of the Uddhav Thackeray government and the emergence of Eknath Shinde with the BJP’s Devendra Fadnavis have caused the MVA to decline. The Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) coalition of Shiv Sena, NCP, and Congress is now under decline with the rise of Eknath Shinde.
The current political toss in Maharashtra politics is also expected to reflect its ill-fortune over the upcoming Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) elections. Amid this, both Congress and the NCP have already declared their decision to contest the BMC polls alone.
Read more: As the MVA folds up, the biggest loser is Congress!
How did the MVA emerge?
The Maha Vikas Aghadi or MVA alliance is a state-level political coalition that was formed after the 2019 Maharashtra legislative assembly elections. The coalition was a cumulative formation of Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena, Sharad Pawar-led NCP, and Sonia Gandhi-led INC, along with other independent MLAs.
The MVA alliance was basically a coalition of non-NDA political parties in Maharashtra. After the 2019 Maharashtra Legislative assembly election crisis irrupted with the conflict between Shiv Sena and the BJP over the Chief Minister position, the MVA lit its lamp in darkness.
The 2019 scuffle about who will be the Chief Minister of Maharashtra, resulted in Shiv Sena breaking ties with the BJP. Following this, the Shiv Sena joined hands with the Maha Aghadi alliance of INC and NCP, forming the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) with a total count of 154 seats.
MVA was made to be broken
The MVA alliance was destined to be doomed from the begining. Since its formation, the MVA alliance had been in the doldrums with continuous differences in the coalition. The biggest factor for its decline was its internal ideological differences.
Two open wires increase the probability of a short circuit. The same happened in the MVA government. Two parties with different ideological practices cannot survive peacefully under the same roof. Congress, being the leading left and Shiv Sena, being the followers of Hindu dharma, were finding it difficult to maintain their alliance from day one. This can be evidenced through various conflicting instances in the MVA alliance.
Cracks had started to emerge in 2019 itself. As per a 2019 report of Free Press Journal, Rohit Pawar, son of Sharad Pawar’s nephew has called Bal Thackeray, the founder of Shiv Sena, a clever man who would attack political opponents through the weekly magazine Marmik and Saamana.
Read more: Tough times ahead for MVA
Former CM of Maharashtra Devendra Fadnavis had once called the MVA coalition a live-in relationship, where “it will fall owing to its own difference”. “The day it falls, we will have the responsibility and we will give a strong government.”
Shinde won amid the tussle between Shiv Sena and Congress
Time and again, the internal differences in the MVA alliance dampened the Maharashtra crisis. The already dilapidated MVA government in Maharashtra worsened the situation, resulting in its complete decline from the political structure of the financial capital.
Amid the controversies, Eknath Shinde emerged as the runner-up who took the opportunity amidst the worsened scenario of Maharashtra politics. The new Chief Minister of the state saw the internal betrayals in the MVA government as an opportunity. He thus tried to form his own government by kicking out Shiv Sena and paralyzing the MVA alliance, to become the new winner.
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