Thackeray, who is also the Shiv Sena president, was sworn-in as the chief minister and presided over the first cabinet meeting . Thackeray is heading the government of a three-party alliance, ‘Maha Vikas Aghadi’, whose main constituents are the Sena, the NCP and the Congress.
Maharashtra politics has cantered with Sharad Pawar has risen above anyone else as he navigated the unwieldy just-born alliance of the Nationalist Congress Party-Shiv Sena-Congress and in the process delivered a body blow to the hubris and aura of invincibility created by PM Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah. The main BJP party is shrinking their footprint.
Pawar’s gambit was assisted by Tuesday’s Supreme Court verdict that proved a game-changer in solving the tensions within the Hindu Undivided Pawar Family. Now, the four metro cities are ruled by the non BJP parties. It is true that, the 59-year-old Shiv Sena leader head a remote control government, with the power in the hands of wily Maratha strongman Sharad Pawar.
For Modi and Shah, the humiliating setback is bigger than the electoral defeats in New Delhi and in Bihar in 2015. Maharashtra has Mumbai, the Republic’s financial capital.
The fall of Bharatiya Janata Party has lost the game that it had won in the people’s court along with its pre-poll ally, the Shiv Sena and the root cause of the defeat is the dispute with its ally. It is a credit to the leaders of the NCP, Shiv Sena and Congress who showed flexibility to join hands without much common ground between them.
As soon as the Supreme Court judgment came in on Tuesday afternoon, Ajit Pawar met Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and expressed his inability to continue as deputy chief minister.
The Supreme Court judgment was elaborate and direct. It was a reaffirmation of the apex court’s ruling on a similar political imbroglio in Karnataka last year with the caveat that macro Constitutional issues of division of power would be taken up at an appropriate time.
Sanjay Raut is man of the match, Sharad Pawar is man of series and they have changed the game of Maharashtra politics and Sena has expressing concern over the withdrawal of Special Protection Group cover given to Congress president Sonia Gandhi and her children Rahul and Priyanka, the Shiv Sena on Saturday said political differences should be kept aside in such matters and one should not play with anybody’s life.
