In June last year, the startling dénouement to Maharashtra’s regime change drama came when BJP leader Devendra Fadnavis, widely considered the front-runner for the top post, bit the bullet and announced ‘rebel’ Shiv Sena leader Eknath Shinde’s name as the State’s 20th Chief Minister.
The crisis triggered by Mr. Shinde’s revolt, which vertically split the 56-year-old party founded by the late Bal Thackeray and toppled the tripartite Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government led by Uddhav Thackeray, significantly altered Maharashtra’s political equation.
But in the 10 months since Mr. Shinde’s faction of 50 MLAs (40 from the undivided Sena and 10 Independents) formed a new government with the BJP, there have been questions about the constitutional and moral legitimacy of his government. Those questions were reinforced by Supreme Court’s verdict last week in the Sena vs Sena case, which held that Maharashtra Governor Bhagat Singh Koshiyari’s call for a trust vote that led to the resignation of the Uddhav Thackeray-led government, was illegal.
The rise of the current CM, from his hardscrabble early years working in a brewery, then leaving studies to drive an autorickshaw in Thane to support his family, has become the stuff of legend in Maharashtra’s politics (He finally took a B.A. degree in 2020). With no platinum spoon or political pedigree, Mr. Shinde built one for himself, nurtured and mentored by the fiery and fearsome Anand Dighe, the late Sena strongman dubbed the ‘Bal Thackeray of Thane.’
Mr. Shinde, who become a Sena branch head in Thane when he was just 18 in 1982, modelled his personality on Dighe, who was known for his simplicity, honesty and round-the-clock accessibility for poorer sections but a dangerous man to cross when dealing with political or personal betrayal. The 1980s were momentous for Mr. Shinde’s career; this was a period when Bal Thackeray made a notable shift from his party’s nativist plank to adopt a hardline ‘Hindutva’ stance by piggybacking on the Ram Janmabhoomi agitation.
In 1997, he first tasted electoral success, becoming a corporator in the Thane Municipal Corporation. In 2000, Mr. Shinde’s life entered a traumatic phase when two of his children tragically died in a boating accident. He went into a shock, but was brought back into active politics by Dighe.
Recalling this dark perosonal phase in the Legislative Assembly last year, Mr. Shinde, a dour, laconic man known for keeping emotions under tight control, momentarily broke down at the memory of his deceased children and recalling Dighe’s succour to him. Mr. Shinde rallied from these personal tragedies and made a strong return to lead the Shiv Sena in Thane.
Party organiser
His skills as a superb organiser and dynamic worker translated into electoral success with Mr. Shinde first becoming a legislator, winning the Thane Assembly seat in 2004 and thereby winning the Kopri-Pachpakhadi seat (created from the Thane segment) for three consecutive terms. Importantly, he emerged as a bridge between the BJP and the Shiv Sena when fault-lines appeared in the alliance after Bal Thackeray’s death.
In contrast to Mr. Shinde’s humility and image as a hard-working doer rather than a windbag, the coterie around Uddhav Thackeray was being viewed as arrogant, with Mr. Thackeray himself considered a faineant chief, inaccessible to his MLAs or the party cadre. The projection of scion Aaditya Thackeray and the importance given to confidantes like Rajya Sabha Sanjay Raut, deeply alienated a wide section of the leadership who deferred to Mr. Shinde.
However, despite Mr. Shinde’s personal qualities and equation with the BJP, his influence as CM appears to be circumscribed only to his stronghold Thane. Besides, the Sena cadre continues to side with the Thackeray clan, underscoring the resonance of the ‘Thackeray’ name with the party rank-and-file despite the Election Commission awarding the party name and symbol to Mr. Shinde’s faction.
While claiming to be Bal Thackeray’s legitimate political heir, Mr. Shinde has struggled to shake off the image of being a ‘BJP puppet’ with its top brass in Delhi dictating Maharashtra’s script. There is also an inbuilt friction with Mr. Fadnavis and the unenviable task of managing dissensions within his faction.
More problematically for the Shinde-BJP dispensation, it seems to be losing electoral ground to the MVA. The ruling alliance was trounced by the MVA in the recent Legislative Council by-polls and the Andheri and Kasba Peth Assembly by-polls. A stark instance was Mr. Shinde’s high-decibel campaign in the Kasba Assembly by-poll in Pune, which fell on deaf ears.
The long-pending civic polls, particularly the critical cash-rich Mumbai civic body (BMC), will be the acid test for Mr. Uddhav as well as Mr. Shinde and the BJP. Mr. Shinde will know whether he is in control of the chain of events he set in motion and the BJP will learn whether they did right by propelling a ‘supporting actor’ to ‘leading man’ status.
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