HOLDING THE FORT
EVEN IN AN ATTENUATED VICTORY, MAHARASHTRA CHIEF MINISTER DEVENDRA FADNAVIS HAS DEMONSTRATED HIS ABILITY TO LAST THE COURSE, TAKING IN HIS WINNING STRIDE BOTH A DEMANDING ALLY AND A RESURGENT OPPOSITION
Devendra Fadnavis returns as Maharashtra chief minister, but now has to contend with the rising ambitions of ally Shiv Sena
Mee punha yein (I’ll be back).” That was Devendra Fadnavis in June this year, sounding more Terminator than chief minister. He was responding to charges by the Opposition that he had been a failure on all fronts. It was the last day of the legislative assembly session in June and Fadnavis was oozing confidence—certain that he would be the state’s first chief minister since the late Vasantrao Naik in 1972 to complete a full term.
On October 24, Fadnavis made history for a second time. He is now the first non-Congress CM in the state’s 59-year history to have returned to power after a full term. In October 2014, he was chosen to lead the state over party stalwarts like Nitin Gadkari and Eknath Khadse. And as the results were counted on October 24, he remained undisputed leader, even though the party won 17 fewer seats than it did in 2014. Fadnavis is back, but in a vastly changed political landscape. The BJP win indicates that voters are ready to give them another opportunity, but it is a qualified victory. Fadnavis has to contend with a resurgent ally, the Shiv Sena, which recorded its fourthbest performance ever to bag 56 seats. Already, Sena president Uddhav Thackeray has raised the stakes. Even as the results were coming in, at a press conference on Thursday, he said the alliance will not stake claim to form the government until they arrive at a power-sharing formula. “We insist on a 50:50 share of power,” he told reporters. Fadnavis, meanwhile, avoided confronting Thackeray. He said they have already decided the power-sharing formula. “We will disclose it at the right time,” he said.
The opposition didn’t do too badly either. Far from being written off, Sharad Pawar’s
NCP added 13 seats to its 2014 tally. Even the Congress, with 44 seats, increased its count by two, not particularly impressive but remarkable for a dispirited, leaderless party. Remember, the party was on the verge of a split with its Mumbai unit in a shambles and poised for an exodus of leaders. Among ex-Mumbai Congress presidents, Kripashankar Singh has quit while Sanjay Nirupam had criticised the ticket distribution.
Despite the reduced number, Fadnavis’s victory is impressive, particularly given the handicap of his origins in an upper-caste minority community. The powerful Marathas were against him and most of the senior BJP leaders in the state did not appreciate his style of working.
The BJP and Sena had swept the Lok Sabha election in May 2019, winning 41 of the state’s 48 Lok Sabha seats. These results translated into a victory of 227 assembly seats for the BJP-Sena combine. So what happened since then? Why couldn’t Fadnavis repeat the party’s 2014 performance? One major reason was the government’s botched handling of flood relief in in western Maharashtra including Pune, Kolhapur, Sangli and Satara in July-August this year. This is the area where the NCP won the most seats (28). At least 50 people died in the floods, but the government machinery was slow to act. The government was nowhere on the scene in the first two days of the crisis. In fact, Fadnavis was in the midst of a statewide Maha Janadesh Yatra at the time.
The BJP’s move to book Sharad Pawar in an ED case, that too merely on a private complaint, also backfired. It created a sympathy wave for the septuagenarian Pawar. He
smartly turned it into a platform to consolidate his base among the Marathas, one of the big reasons the NCP managed 50plus seats. The BJP had poached 35 leaders from the Congress and NCP, but even that did not dent the party’s performance; only 16 of them won. The NCP’s showing has also ended speculation of its merger with the Congress, at least for the time being. With Pawar ruling out a tie-up with the Shiv Sena on results day, the NCP is now the state’s primary opposition party. The issue of Pawar’s political heir has also been sorted out with the victory of his grand-nephew Rohit from KarjatJamkhed. However, it will be interesting to see whether Pawar chooses nephew Ajit or OBC leader Dhananjay Munde, who has emerged as a giant-killer by defeating estranged cousin Pankaja Munde, minister for women and child welfare, in
Parli, as leader of the opposition.
Fadnavis was the only leader of consequence in the BJP who wanted to take the Sena along in the election. His wish now granted, he will have to manage an unexpectedly dominant ally. Since at 56 seats, the Sena is close to its 2014 tally of 63 and the BJP has lost 17 seats, Uddhav Thackeray will be in a commanding position. Sena leader Anil Desai says the party expects Fadnavis to fulfil his promise of giving the Sena a 50 per cent share in power. Thackeray is likely to bargain hard to get plum portfolios for his men in the cabinet. He will also push for his poll promises of lunch at Rs 10, annual allowance of Rs 10,000 to farmers, scrapping of the chemical refinery in Konkan and completion of the coastal road project in Mumbai which was stalled by the high court this year. Fadnavis is also looking at 13 elected Independents, all BJP-Sena rebels who have won the election, and two allies. “I have contacted all of them,” he says.
At the same time, Thackeray will have to worry about the Sena losing ground in its bastion of Mumbai. The mayor of Mumbai, Vishwanath Mahadeshwar, lost to the Congress’s Zeeshan Siddiqui in Bandra (East) where Thackeray lives. It will be interesting to see whether Thackeray decides to induct son Aaditya into the cabinet or give him time to “learn the legislature affairs” before accepting any responsibility. One thing is clear—Aaditya will not become the deputy chief minister, a hope some Sena leaders had raised.
The focus over the next five years will stay on Fadnavis. His slender victory margin might actually work in his favour. Earlier, prior to the election, party leaders had wanted him to be shifted to Delhi in the event of a landslide win for the BJP, the logic being that anyone could manage the state. But with the alliance’s narrow victory, Fadnavis will have to stay back to ensure things remain under control.
Not the least of his worries is the Congress comeback. The party survived multiple back-to-back defeats in the state only because of its local satraps like Vijay, also known as Balasaheb Thorat, and Ashok Chavan. Maharashtra Congress spokesperson Sachin Sawant admitted that they need to introspect on why they could not win the people’s hearts. However, he says the election results have put “new energy” into the party.
The fact that the party has held its tally might also halt the flight of leaders like Milind Deora and Sanjay Nirupam. The state Congress is also likely to see a reshuffle in its organisational structure to accommodate young blood.
For Fadnavis, it will be a reality check after the high of the past few weeks when the media was predicting a sweep for the party in the state. But the young chief minister is no stranger to adversity. When the party swept the 2014 election without a chief minister candidate, Fadnavis was not even the frontrunner for the post. Even his parent organisation, the RSS, was sceptical about his acceptance in the
Maratha-dominated state. Ten of the state’s 17 CMs till then had been from the Maratha community. Fadnavis was not only a Brahmin but also from the state’s backward Vidarbha region. He has a story on how he was chosen for the post. He was state BJP president in 2014 when the Lok Sabha election was held and his campaign style had impressed Modi. But when even senior BJP leaders, including the late Gopinath Munde, were predicting 35 Lok Sabha seats for the BJP-Sena alliance, Fadnavis had confidently said they would win 41 seats. He was proved right. “Devendra Fadnavis is the most precious gift Nagpur has given to the country,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi told a rally in the CM’s hometown during the 2014 assembly election. That was the moment Fadnavis realised he could be the next CM.
Governing Maharashtra has never been an easy task. The state, with 48 Lok Sabha seats, is second only to Uttar Pradesh’s 80. It is the country’s most industrialised state, accounting for 13 per cent of the country’s manufacturing sector and 17 per cent of the service sector. Every CM since Vasantrao Naik has struggled to administer the state. Every man in the top post, barring Shankarrao Chavan, Vasantdada Patil, Sharad Pawar and
Sudhakarrao Naik, was deposed on charges of corruption or inefficiency (Chavan and Pawar quit after they became ministers at the Centre). It hasn’t been a cakewalk for Fadnavis either. He found his political skills tested by three major agitations—by the farmers, the Marathas and the Koregaon-Bhima attacks on Dalits. A fiery speaker in the past, Fadnavis says he became a patient listener while dealing with these issues.
The turning point in his government was the reservation agitation by the state’s dominant Maratha community in late 2016. The community mobilised hundreds of thousands in 57 huge marches across the state. Reservations in government jobs and education were the only way, they said, to restore the slide in the community’s prestige. The knives were out for Fadnavis within the party. Many within the party, including party president Amit Shah, thought of replacing him. A disturbed Fadnavis did not lose his cool. He not only opened backdoor negotiations with the leaders of the Maratha community but also speeded up the formalities to bring the community into the ambit of reservation. “I have learned that patience is the key,” he says.
Fadnavis reconstituted the dormant Maharashtra Backward Class Commission to ensure that any legislation would be legally valid. After the Commission rebranded the Maratha community socially and economically backward, the CM got
THE SHIV SENA WILL HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT LOSING GROUND IN ITS BASTION OF MUMBAI. THE PARTY LOST THE BANDRA EAST SEAT, WHERE UDDHAV THACKERAY STAYS
the state legislature to pass a bill on June 27, 2019, granting them 16 per cent reservation. The high court reduced it to 13 per cent in government jobs and 12 per cent in education, but it was still a huge victory for Fadnavis. That he managed to keep the 23 per cent reservation for the OBCs intact also worked to his advantage.
The farmers’ agitation was the next big threat. In March 2018, the farmers hit the streets demanding better prices for their produce. The state had been in the grip of a drought for three successive years. Fadnavis allowed the farmers to vent their anger but in a move that surprised everyone, he called left-leaning farmer leader Ajit Navale for talks and convinced him to put the agitation on hold. Later, in October 2018, Fadnavis announced the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Shetkari Sanman Yojana which waived farm loans up to Rs 1.5 lakh. His emphasis on linking the farm loan waiver with Aadhar also brought transparency to the deal and helped detect fake and ‘ghost’ accounts. As a result, the number of actual beneficiaries came down from 8.9 million to 5.2 million. The farm loan waiver amount also came down to Rs 22,000 crore from Rs 32,000 crore. NCP chief Pawar, though, isn’t convinced, and the election results prove it. He had called the waiver an “eye wash”, saying farmers are yet to benefit from the scheme. “The farming crisis is the biggest issue in Maharashtra,” Pawar had told india today in an interview before the assembly poll. “Farmers’ distress and the industrial slowdown are Fadnavis’s biggest achievements in the past five years.” In the Vidarbha region, where most of the farmer suicides have taken place, the BJP lost 17 seats it had won in 2014.
The Koregaon-Bhima violence that took place on January 1, 2018, also possibly affected the results. The unrest posed a serious threat to the social fabric of Maharashtra. Members of the Scheduled Caste communities were attacked by unknown assailants when they gathered to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the Koregaon-Bhima battle between the British army and the army of the Peshwas (the Mahar soldiers, fighting for the British, had held up a numerically superior Maratha army for one day). In the violence that followed, a Maratha youth was killed near Pune. Though the police initially named Hindutva leader Sambhaji Bhide, president of the Shiv Pratishthan Hindustan, as the main suspect, it was later clubbed a Maoist conspiracy.
Despite the relatively slim margin of the assembly win, it will still cement Fadnavis’s position in the party. For one, he has few opponents left in
THE ASSEMBLY WIN, THOUGH BY A SLIM MARGIN, WILL STILL CEMENT FADNAVIS’S POSITION IN THE PARTY. FOR ONE, HE HAS FEW OPPONENTS LEFT IN THE STATE
the state. All his detractors were denied tickets. From the voluble revenue minister Eknath Khadse to higher education minister Vinod Tawde and senior party leaders like Prakash Mehta and Raj Purohit, they are all out. Another rival, Pankaja Munde, who lost in Parli, is also now out. Team Fadnavis is now a group of trusted lieutenants such as water resources minister Girish Mahajan, food and drug administration minister Jaykumar Rawal, labour minister Sambhaji PatilNilangekar and minister for OBCs Sanjay Kute (see Team Fadnavis). How Fadnavis handles the Sena will be closely watched as ties between the two were stormy for the most part of his first term.
Fadnavis’s big challenges will be to tackle the issue of rising unemployment, social security and water scarcity. A report by the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) pegged Maharashtra’s unemployment rate at 5.7 per cent in September this year (still better than the national average of 7.2 per cent). Marathwada and Vidarbha regions are the most backward in terms of opportunities for employment. This year, the state has recorded 99 per cent of the average monsoon so far following three years of drought. Fadnavis says he will work on making
Maharashtra drought-free in the next five years.
The state continues to be an industrial powerhouse. Fadnavis claims Maharashtra has received 35 per cent of the total foreign direct investment (FDI) coming into India in the past two years. The state debt, at Rs 4.85 lakh crore, might appear astronomical but is only 17 per cent of the state’s Gross Domestic Product (GSDP). The Reserve Bank of India permits borrowings up to 23 per cent of the state GDP. Fadnavis has successfully negotiated with the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) for loans at 0.5 per cent interest for two mega projects–the Trans Harbour Link and the Mumbai Metro.
The state’s rate of converting MoUs for investment into actual contracts is 40 per cent, the highest in the country. Fadnavis will have to demonstrate he means business. There is also the shadow of the failed Foxcon deal. The Taiwanese phone manufacturing giant announced a $5 billion investment plan in 2015, India’s single largest FDI proposal, but on the condition it would get land near Mumbai and a 30 per cent tax concession. Fadnavis couldn’t deliver and the company shifted the project out of Maharashtra. Fadnavis has taken on a lot of infrastructure projects like the Mumbai Metro, the Nagpur-Mumbai Super Communication Highway, the Navi Mumbai airport, the Trans Harbour Link connecting Mumbai to Nhava-Sheva in Raigad. These projects, costing a total of around Rs 3 lakh crore, will have to be completed before 2024. The first phases of Mumbai Metro-3 and Navi Mumbai airport are slated for completion by 2021 and 2022, respectively. The Trans Harbour Link is still only on paper, a tender for the project is yet to be floated. He also has other promises to keep—a 212-metre memorial of Chhatrapati Shivaji in the Arabian Sea off Mumbai and a 140-metre-tall statue of Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar at the Indu Mill compound in Dadar. Tall tasks indeed. ■