By Quaid Najmi Mumbai 2 Sep : Two months after the coalition government of Shiv Sena rebel faction chief and Chief Minister Eknath Shinde and Bharatiya Jnata party’s Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis took charge, Union Home Minister Amit Shah is scheduled to travel to Mumbai on the 5th of September at the peak of the Ganeshotsav festival.
Shah’s annual trip to the state’s most important festival in recent years was an essentially religious affair attending the Lalbaugcha Raja and other important places, and taking “darshan” of Lord Ganesha at the residences of many BJP majors in the city.
However, this year the menu for devotional services could be interspersed with an unintentionally political agenda that aims to strengthen the Shinde Fadnavis regime, which is currently plagued by external, internal and legal controversies, in addition to other ghosts of politics.
Fadnavis acknowledged all possibilities with smile, saying “there will be an agenda for politics” when Shah visited on Monday however, he did not elaborate.
The Shinde Fadnavis government has struggled to gain credibility with the masses following it overthrew the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) of Shiv Sena-Nationalist Congress Party-Congress, which is headed by Uddhav Thackeray.
The MVA has ruthlessly targeted and vituperatively criticized them for the way in the way that the government came into power, with embarrassing choruses of “Khoke Ok” (boxes that suggest the sum of Rs 50 crore), “traitors”, etc.In the shadow of the “ED Sarkar” and threatening the 40 or so lawmakers of the rebel group that left the government from June 10 to June 10.
The Thackeray-led Shiv Sena even took a step further and compared them with the well-known Arabian Nights tale of 40 suspect characters, which prompted shouts of protests and a rage of attacks by the “turncoats”.
Shinde received criticism for the huge delay in the expansion of his cabinet with 18 Ministers.This occurred 41 days following the day he as well as Fadnavis took vows on June 30 – and then the delays in assigning portfolios, as well as the hanging swords of the legal battle in the Supreme Court.
In the present, he confronts discontent afresh with many MLAs from his and BJP side demanding ministerial seats and while a new round of expansion might take some time, Shah may cast a harmless “glance” and reassure the agitated legislators.
There is the issue of the planned tie-up with Maharashtra Navnirman Sena President Raj Thackeray, which the BJP has been awaiting in the past few of years.
A former BJP-baiter with a sharp edge Raj Thackeray reportedly sped up his trip to the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in August of this year, and the “ED Sarkar” is “after” him to form a highly-anticipated partnership ahead of the crucial civic elections.
After recovering from a hip operation, Raj Thackeray has been the talk of this season for the BJP with an array of leaders calling for him, such as Shinde, Fadnavis, state and city party leaders Chandrashekhar Bawankule and Ashish Shelar respectively, as well as others.
There’s a great deal of speculation that Shah could zero in on the hesitant Raj Thackeray and force him into the direction of a co-operative alliance – to mutual gain of MNS-BJP-Shinde group in the civic elections to start with and then receive an “Thackeray” to the BJP side.
Recently, prominent Congressmen like former CM Ashok Chavan, have been making several rounds of various BJP leaders, ragging the state unit of the party.
Yet, Congress leaders and Chavan have claimed that these meetings are “official or constituency-related work” however, the grapevine of politics is expanding into a grapevine!
It isn’t certain if Shah will pay any time to this recent political trend, which could be a sign of further deterioration for the MVA.
(Quaid Najmi may be reached via [email protected])
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