Uddhav Thackeray resigns, BJP serves revenge on Shiv Sena

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By Manish Anand

New Delhi, June 29: Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray announced that he’s resigning within minutes of the Supreme Court refraining from interfering in the Maharashtra Governor Bhagat Singh Koshyari’s direction to the ruling Maha Vikas Aghadi to prove majority in the Assembly on Thursday.

Thackeray’s resignation paves way for the formation of the new government in the state.

Since the 2019 Assembly elections, Maharashtra politics has been a potboiler, following in the footsteps of the Mumbai film industry’s racy scripts.

The Maharashtra Minister and the rebel Shiv Sena MLA Eknath Shinde has told the Supreme Court that 39 legislators of his party are with him. That is a number safe enough to escape the scrutiny of the anti-defection law.

Along with the independent MLAs, the BJP will be in a comfortable position to cruise past the half way mark to form the government in Maharashtra.

The BJP and its smaller allies have 113 MLAs in the state Assembly which has a strength of 288.

After Shinde’s rebellion, the Shiv Sena, which had 56 MLAs, will be decimated, denting the Maha Vikas Aghadi’s abilities to explore alternative government.

With the likelihood of a section of the Lok Sabha MPs of the Shiv Sena also defecting in the next few days, the BJP would draw comfort in serving revenge to its former ally in Maharashtra.

The MVA, after the formation with the coming together of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), the Congress and the Shiv Sena, had claimed to have checkmated the BJP in the Maharashtra politics.

Despite emerging as the single largest party and its pre-poll alliance gaining majority, the BJP had to sit out in the Opposition following Thackeray’s insistence on becoming the Chief Minister of the state.

In about two years, Thackeray fulfilled his dream of becoming the Chief Minister, but squandered away much of the strength of the Shiv Sena, which will make its relevance in the next Lok Sabha elections and the Assembly polls suspect.

For the BJP, ousting the MVA from power in Maharashtra is seen in the political circles crucial to choke the fund flow of the opposition parties. Maharashtra is well known to be the cash cow of India’s electoral politics.

Former Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis in all likelihood will take the oath for third time. His second oath taking ceremony at the break of the dawn was a script straight out of a B-grade Mumbai film, which bombed within a few days, as his co-conspirator and the NCP strongman Ajit Pawar had a change of heart within hours.

Fadnavis was in the national capital a night before he called on the state Governor to press for the trust vote in the state Assembly. By this time, the Shinde camp was already flowing with stocks of the MLAs in the Guwahati hotel, and they flew to Goa for sightseeing at the beaches before the final act of the script in Mumbai on Thursday.