Maharashtra’s political drama has been unfolding since November 2019 with the splintering of parties, the swearing-in of various chief ministers and deputy chief ministers and political grandstanding.
In a pattern that is now becoming all too familiar, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party on Sunday engineered a split in the Nationalist Congress Party. The rebellion in the Nationalist Congress Party was led by Ajit Pawar, the nephew of party supremo Sharad Pawar and a man the BJP had vowed to send to jail over an alleged multi-crore irrigation scam.
Only last June, the BJP helped splinter the Shiv Sena to bring down the three-party Maha Vikas Aghadi government headed by Uddhav Thackeray. Weeks later, Shiv Sena Thane strongman Eknath Shinde was sworn in as chief minister with the BJP’s Devendra Fadnavis as his deputy. On Sunday, Ajit Pawar was sworn in as a second deputy chief minister.
Loksatta Editor Girish Kuber put things in perspective in an interview with Scroll: “The BJP is singularly focused on [next year’s] parliamentary elections.” He noted that between the BJP and the Eknath Shinde faction of the Shiv Sena, the government did not need Ajit Pawar and his MLAs to bring it stability. “This move is like a preemptive strike for the parliamentary…
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