Scent Of Saffron In Den Of The Tiger

Sena plays second fiddle as BJP goes for the kill in Maharashtra, again

- Giridhar Jha

The Shiv Sena can wait. There will be no vacancy on the 6th floor of Mantralaya, the Mahar­ashtra chief minister’s office in upscale South Mumbai, if the BJP leads its alliance back to power on October 24. Maharashtra politics have changed and so has the hierarchy in the saffron alliance. With a perceptible shift in its position, the BJP is now firmly in the driver’s seat, having relegated its ally Sena to play second fiddle in the ensuing assembly polls—a scenario few political pundits would have placed their wagers on five years ago. And by the looks of it, Deven­dra Fadnavis looks well on course for his second consecutive term in office.

Back in 2014, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP’s national presi­dent Amit Shah reposed trust in Fadnavis—only the second Brahmin leader since Shiv Sena’s Manohar Joshi to bec­ome the CM—there was no dearth of skeptics wondering whether the 44­year­ old leader from Nagpur had it in him whatever it takes to govern the richest state, dominated by powerful Maratha satraps over the years. Five years on, Fadnavis has tightened his grip on the party and his deft handling of the Maratha reservation issue, among other things, appears to have further endeared him to the central leadership.

As the state goes to the polls on October 21, a weakened opposition has failed to build any anti­incumbency narrative against Fadnavis’s regime while his own party rivals have fallen by the wayside. The Sena—once the big brother in the alliance—has been forced to play the sec­ondary role despite harboring ambitions to change the coalition’s power equation back to its original factory settings.