For Fadnavis, a challenge and an opportunity

So, finally the decks are clear for the installation of the Mahayuti government in Maharashtra.

Outgoing Chief Minister Eknath Shinde after a not-so-surprising tantrum has bowed to the inevitable. Given the composition of the new Assembly, it would have been a moral and electoral perversity for anyone other than the leader of the 132-strong BJP legislative party to head the government. That was the voters' will as expressed through the ballot box. Shinde, as the leader of the second largest constituent in the Mahayuti after the BJP, has a key role to play in the government. Hopefully, the allocation of ministerial portfolios will be worked out amicably. The Chief Minister-elect, Devendra Fadnavis, has a task on his hands persuading ministerial aspirants from his own party to wait out in order for him to accommodate a disproportionately high number of ministers from the Shiv Sena and the NCP. Exigencies of managing a coalition often call for the bigger constituent to make concessions.