The message from Mumbai: Return of BJP as NDA boss-in-chief, rise of new regional satraps

Shinde fluctuated between saying that he would go by whatever Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah decided, and delaying till the final few hours his confirmation that he would participate in the oath-taking, thus reconciling to a Deputy CM status.

With the BJP persuading Shinde to relent with a mix of cajoling and some hard truths – the huge seat margin by which the BJP outnumbered the Sena, for one – a party insider not wishing to be named said: “When someone is in the skies, it takes time for them to be brought to the ground. We were certain we would have our way, and party workers wanted Fadnavis as CM. We just waited for Shinde to see the altered reality, that his best option to keep his nascent party in the reckoning for the future was to stay with the NDA.”

The press conference where Fadnavis held the stage, flanked by NCP chief Ajit Pawar and Shinde, cracking jokes, was literal confirmation that the BJP may still be dependent on allies at the Centre due to its new numbers, but that the levers of power had shifted.

The other message from the picture from Mumbai was for the BJP’s own ranks. By going with Fadnavis as CM, the party made a break from its moves after the Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh poll wins last year, where a central leadership convinced of its own inevitability had plucked virtually nobodies and given them the top state post.

Fadnavis, however, is a power centre in his own right. A BJP leader said the party realised it needed a man like him as CM to retain the party’s primacy in the Mahayuti alliance in the face of shrewd partners such as Shinde and Ajit Pawar. That from apart, Fadnavis is also close to the RSS.

Another BJP leader added: “What is important here is that the party is seeing the emergence of regional satraps again. By 2023 end, it was being said that with B S Yediyurappa, Vasundhara Raje and Shivraj Singh Chouhan no longer CMs, the party was moving towards extreme centralisation. But now the party has some very popular and relatively young CMs – like Yogi Adityanath in Uttar Pradesh, Fadnavis in Maharashtra and Himanta Biswa Sarma in Assam.”

The leader compared the situation to the one between 2004 and 2014, when Modi, Chouhan, Raje, Raman Singh and Yediyurappa were powerful satraps who called the shots on their state turf, but with one key difference: “The central leadership at that time was weak, while we now have a powerful one, in Modi and Shah, and supported by some veteran Cabinet ministers.”

In other words, however powerful the CMs or other state leaders may be, there is little doubt about who has the final say.

Coming to Maharashtra, the BJP is now the preeminent party, much ahead in seat numbers compared to allies Shinde Sena and Ajit Pawar’s NCP, and head and shoulders above the Maha Vikas Aghadi’s (MVA’s) Congress, NCP (SP) and Shiv Sena (UBT).

The crisis for the MVA is far from over, with NCP (SP) chief Sharad Pawar facing the prospect of his nephew Ajit walking away with the party legacy, Sena (UBT) leader Uddhav Thackeray fearing the same from Shinde, and the dispirited Congress staring again at pulling itself up by its bootstraps after a succession of Assembly poll setbacks.

The Congress standing is already slipping within the INDIA bloc. The Trinamool Congress has not yet entered into any electoral alliance with the Congress – in fact, it ensured the defeat of Congress veteran Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury in the Lok Sabha – the Samajwadi Party virtually cut it out in the recent by-polls, and the Aam Aadmi Party has given it the cold shoulder in Delhi.