BJP-Sena

Devendra Fadnavis

NCP chief Sharad Pawar

In the bat of an eyelid, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis can switch between charm offensive and sheer ruthlessness

Asromp home with 41seats, there’s perhaps no bigger leader in the state BJP today than the CM.has outdone himself. The chief minister has replicated a near-repeat of the BJP-Sena’s 2014 performance-—bagging 41 of the 48 total seats-—sealing his stature as the tallest leader in the state, perhaps even bigger than that of his predecessor andThe coalition had won 42 seats in 2014. Then, the BJP had contested from 26 seats and the Sena from 22. This time, the BJP fielded candidates from 25 seats.Pawar, as a senior Congress leader, had secured 38 seats in alliance with various factions of the Republican Party of India in 1998.Ever since Fadnavis took over the reins of the party president in 2012, the BJP’s graph in the state had been on a steady rise. In the 2014 assembly election, the BJP’s tally went from 46 in 2009 to 122. The BJP has emerged as the single largest party in panchayat and zilla parishad elections, with more than 1,000 elected representatives, and controls 15 of the 27 municipal corporations in the state.Fadnavis’s personality is largely credited with scripting these wins—he comes across as an affable person but can turn ruthless in an instant. These qualities shone during the Lok Sabha campaign. He dropped seven, a third of the total tally, of sitting MPs this election.“There were some adventurous and ambitious elements in the BJP who wanted to shun all ties with the Sena, considering its constant criticism of BJP governments, both at the state and the Centre, for four years, but Fadnavis was always clear that he needed the Sena to conquer Maharashtra,” said political analyst Prakash Akolkar. “He used his charm to keep Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray in good humour, sealed the alliance and even gave one extra seat to the party.”The two major crises Fadnavis faced in his tenure were the Maratha reservation agitation and the agrarian unrest. He handled both deftly, despite those threatening his political career at one point. In the winter session of the assembly, the state government passed the bill for the Maratha quota, and unlike the Congress-NCP regime’s attempts to provide similar reservation, which were promptly struck down by the court, this time, the case is still pending with the judiciary. One of the reasons why the court was not able to strike it down was because the Fadnavis government had done its homework properly—it got reports from the state backward class commission certifying that Marathas are a backward community.Initially, Fadnavis was reluctant to give farm loan waivers but two massive protest marches and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s announcement in Uttar Pradesh to write off farmers’ loans forced Fadnavis’s hand into making a similar announcement. But his shrewdness came through here. Unlike the UPA government’s loan waiver in 2008, in which the money was sent directly to banks, the state government transferred money into farmers’ bank accounts.Another measure taken by the Fadnavis government to counter the agrarian crisis was Jalyukta Shivar Abhiyan (JSA), a controversial water management programme launched in 2014. Despite conservation experts expressing reservation over the success claims, the state government says it has managed to bring 34.23 lakh hectares of land under irrigation and create water storage of 24.35 lakh thousand cubic metre.One of Fadnavis’s most significant achievements is on urban infrastructure front. Several projects in Mumbai, which were on the drawing board for years, were implemented during his term. This included work on the four Metro lines and the Sewri-Nava Sheva Mumbai Trans Harbour Link. Work on the Bandra-Versova Sea link is expected to begin after the monsoon. One line of the Nagpur Metro is already operational.Akolkar, however, cautioned that the Lok Sabha win doesn’t guarantee a victory in the assembly election, which is just five months away. “Once again, the agrarian crisis and the unrest in the Maratha community will come to fore and Fadanvis’s leadership will be tested again.”