Till a decade back there were three major political player in Maharashtra namely Congress, Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and Shiv Sena, BJP was a small player who was an ally of Shiv Sena in Maharashtra. From the time the state was formed in 1960, Congress ruled Maharashtra till 1994 except 3 years from 1977 t0 1980 when Janata Dal and its allies formed the Govt. Then in 1994, first time Shiv Sena with BJP as Junior Partner formed the Govt. In between 1994 and 1999 when Sena/BJP were in Power, there was one development which was Sharad Pawar breaking away from Congress and forming his own party Nationalist Congress Party (NCP). In the year 1999 when elections took place Congress formed the govt with the support of NCP and this combination ruled the state for next 15 years. But after 2ooo the chinks started appearing in this combination because the ministers from both the parties were involved in some scandal or other, and there were serious allegations about corruptions. In the mean time founder of Shiv Sena Bala Saheb Thackrey expired, even before his death the party broke as Raj Thackrey nephew of Bala Saheb started his own party called Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS). Before the assembly elections in Nov 2014, General Elections for Lok Sabha happened and BJP along with his allies swept to power and Congress was reduced to only 44 seats. So before the state elections the alliance between Congress/ NCP and Shiv Sena /BJP broke and when the election took place there were 5 parties namely BJP, Shiv Sena, Congress, NCP and MNS who fought elections without any alliance with any other party. It was Modi and BJP wave , the party which was having the least number of seats in 2009 emerged as single largest party just short of 20 odd seats for majority. So after showing lot of resistance Shiv Sena reluctantly agreed to support BJP Govt and joined the Ministry. But Shiv Sena could never reconciled to the fact that now BJP is a senior partner as they had almost double the seats of Sena , they started behaving as one of the opposing parties while staying in the govt, and similarly they behaved in the Centre also. But BJP care two hoots for them as they know that most of the MLAs from Sena also do not want mid term elections.
Now the situation of state politics is as follows :
- Recently Udhav Thackrey ( son of Bala Saheb), who is now Sena Chief called for meeting of his MPs and MLAs from Maharashtra to take stock of the situation. He is of the opinion that Sena should come out of both govt at Centre and State, but contrary to his expectations the response was that many of the MPs and MLAs were not in favour of withdrawing support, as they feel after 15 years in state and 10 years in Centre they are in Govt so why they should now sit in opposition, and secondly after demonitisation most of them are not in position to fight elections.
- Now even BJP leaders have started saying that Udhav Thackrey always talks about withdrawing support but he does not have the guts to do the same.
- Recently one more factor has emerged in state politics, and that is of Narayan Rane. He is ex Shiv Sainik, who defected to Congress after Udhav Thackrey was made Executive President of Shiv Sena, he was CM also for one year during Sena/BJP rule in 90s. Rane is the leader from Konkan region , where he has got a big mass base. When he defected to Congress , he says he was promised by Congress that in future he will be CM of the state, but he says Congress never full filled their promise.
- In 2014 Elections first his son lost the Lok Sabha elections and then his other son and he himself lost state elections, and all of them from Konkan region. Rane again contested by elections from Bandra, Mumbai, there also he lost. Now he is trying very hard to get the entry in BJP along with his sons and supporters. Few days back he also made the statement that even Sena wanted him to rejoin the party which he refused. This statement of his is denied by Sena saying that we never made any offer and why should we take back the traitor and back stabber. Sena has given an indirect ultimatum to BJP saying that if they induct Rane in BJP then without any second thoughts they will walk away from the alliance with BJP/NDA.
- Presently Congress is a divided house with no clear leader and MPCC chief Ashok Chavan himself is being implicated in Adarsh scam by CBI. And what to say about NCP, its Chief Sharad Pawar is getting old and his nephew ex DY CM Ajit Pawar is lying low as there are investigations happening against him in Irrigation Scam, now Pawar is trying to promote his daughter Supriya Sule to take over the rein of the party, but how successful she will be, only time will tell. But presently both Congress and NCP are in shambles. As most of the Congress and NCP ministers were involved in corruption scams, do not know how badly the demonitisation has hit them.
So in the end by default, it is going to be advantage BJP at this juncture. First no opposition party is in a state to fight mid term elections, and even if Sena withdraws support in that case NCP might give outside support to BJP to avoid elections. Secondly , Devendra Fadnavis has proved himself to be a clean politician like Modi and people have started liking him showing faith in him. I think presently it is advantage BJP.
So friends, what you say.
Awaiting for your feed backs and comments.