Amid the crisis engulfing the ruling Mahayuti coalition in Maharashtra following its rout in the Lok Sabha election, Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar on June 6 summoned emergency meetings of his Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) faction leaders, even as Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, who has offered to step down from his post, reached Delhi to meet the BJP top brass.
A flurry of meetings were held by Mr. Ajit Pawar, who summoned his NCP faction’s core committee to take stock of the party’s disastrous electoral performance, at his residence ‘Devagiri’ in Mumbai.
The meetings took place amid swirling rumours that several legislators of Mr. Ajit Pawar’s faction were reportedly in touch with the rival NCP (SP) faction headed by his uncle Sharad Pawar, which scored a stunning victory in the election, snaring eight of 10 Lok Sabha seats his party contested, and decisively proving to his nephew that the electorate had rejected the manner in which Ajit split the NCP to align with the BJP last year.
Stressing that “not even a single MLA will go over to Sharad Pawar’s side”, NCP (Ajit faction) State chief Sunil Tatkare claimed instead that some legislators from the Sharad Pawar-led faction were reportedly in touch with his party.
“The core group meeting took stock of our performance in the Lok Sabha election. While we have not been able to secure the expected success, the overall performance of our coalition in the State and at the Centre has not been up to expectation either…no MLA from our side is going anywhere,” Mr. Tatkare said.
He was responding to claims made by Sharad Pawar faction MLA Rohit Pawar, who said that 16-18 MLAs of the Ajit faction were in touch with the NCP (SP).
Loss in Baramati
The NCP leader was the sole candidate form his party to win the election as he successfully retained the Raigad Lok Sabha seat. The biggest blow for the Ajit Pawar faction, which lost three of the four seats it contested, was that of the Baramati Lok Sabha constituency, where Mr. Ajit Pawar’s wife Sunetra Pawar was defeated by his cousin — Supriya Sule, who is Mr. Sharad Pawar’s daughter.
The loss has cast a shadow over the future of the Ajit Pawar-led NCP within the Mahayuti coalition.
Meanwhile, Mr. Ajit Pawar’s colleague and counterpart in the BJP, Mr. Fadnavis, first left for Nagpur and then proceeded to Delhi in the evening, where he is expected to meet Union Minister Amit Shah to convey his decision to be relieved from ministerial duties in order to focus on party building in the State.
Following the BJP’s defeat in the State, Mr. Fadnavis, while accepting responsibility for the BJP’s poll debacle in Maharashtra (the saffron party won a mere nine of the 29 seats it contested), has offered to step down from his ministerial post in the Mahayuti government in order to work “full time” for the party ahead of the Assembly election due later this year.
While several leaders within the State BJP urged Mr. Fadnavis to reconsider the decision, the opposition MVA had a field day in taking potshots at Mr. Fadnavis’ ‘resignation’, which it dubbed as mere gimmick.
‘The villain’
Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) leader Sanjay Raut called Mr. Fadnavis “the villain” of Maharashtra’s politics and lambasted him for having destroyed the State’s political culture by continuously indulging in vendetta politics.
“Such gimmicks are common in politics. Maharashtra has rejected the leadership of Devendra Fadnavis. He is the villain of Maharashtra’s politics, and the BJP has today met with a bad fate only because of him. He has poisoned the State’s political culture and he is paying for it now,” Mr. Raut said. He claimed that the people of the State allegedly disapproved of Mr. Fadnavis even more than they did of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Mr. Shah.
Criticising Mr. Fadnavis’ ‘hubris’, Mr. Raut said that in Vidarbha, said to be the BJP’s stronghold, the party was decisively routed by the Congress with only stalwart BJP leader Nitin Gadkari managing to hold on to his Nagpur seat.
The Sena (UBT) leader further claimed that if Mr. Modi tried to forcibly form the government, it would not last as he was allegedly facing opposition from within the party.
“My information is that the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s top leadership is looking for an alternative to Mr. Modi,” Mr. Raut claimed.
With Mr. Ajit Pawar and his NCP as well as Mr. Fadnavis and the BJP going into a huddle, Chief Minister Eknath Shinde and his leaders will be reaching Delhi to meet with Mr. Modi and the BJP brass.
Mr. Shinde, like Mr. Ajit Pawar, took stock of the coalition’s performance in the Lok Sabha election at a meeting with his leaders on June 6.
Sources said that Mr. Shinde, whose Sena faction won seven of the 15 seats it contested, has now emerged as the third-largest member of the NDA after N. Chandrababu Naidu’s TDP and Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal (United).
Mr. Shinde is likely to demand a Cabinet berth at the Centre along with two Ministers of State, said informed sources.
