Bhubaneswar: The Mahayuti won Maharashtra in a grand way. The alliance scored 231 seats with BJP bagging 132, Shiv Sena (Shinde) 57 and Ajit Pawar led NCP 41. The electoral battle is now done and dusted. The fight for supremacy between Shiv Sena led by Uddhav Thackeray and Shinde led Shiv Sena or the Uncle vs nephew power play settled.
Now the time is for government formation. However, the bigger question that grips every mindspace is who will be leading the Mahayuti government. Who will be crowned the CM?
WHY EKNATH SHINDE RESIGNED?
The big news that occupied the air space on Tuesady has been resignation of Eknath Shinde from the post of CM of Maharashtra. Does this action indicate anything big?
On the face of it, the date of resignation of Maharashtra CM Eknath Shinde coincides with the last date of the 14th assembly of the state of Maharashtra. Since Eknath Shinde was CM in the 14th Assembly, therefore is resignation is a logical process. No big hint lies here.
WHY ‘BIHAR MODEL’ IN NEWS?
Eknath Shinde became the CM in the 14th Assembly of Maharashtra for the last 2.5 years under the ‘Bihar Model’ of power sharing in NDA. The coin of ‘Bihar Model’ has been in circulation in the political space of the country since 2020.
In the 2020 Bihar Assembly elections, BJP won big by gaining 21 seats more to bag 74 seats, just 1 short of RJD. Nitish Kumar led JDU trailed with only 43 seats, after a loss of 28 seats. But with NDA together having the majority, Nitish Kumar took the oath of CM, despite securing lesser number of seats than BJP.
In needs mentioning that in the electoral democracy in India, the thumb rule has been that leader of the largest party usually take the oath of CM/PM. The big reason has been that he is representative of the largest section of voters. But in Bihar, the thumb rule was given a go by.
Two years hence in the year 2022, when the Shiv Sena led by Uddhav Thackeray starred at a mutiny led by Eknath Shinde. And when the Eknath Shinde group formed govt with largest party BJP, also a pre-poll partner of Shiv Sena, the Bihar Model came into play in CM selection. Eknath Shinde was named CM.
‘BIHAR MODEl’ VS ‘BIHAR MODEL’ IN MAHARASHTRA
Even as the Bihar model in Maharashtra came into play in year 2022, there has been a subtle difference between the original ‘Bihar model’ versus the Maharashtra-ised ‘Bihar Model’.
In the former, PM Modi and Amit Shah had gone to poll battlefield with the promise of Bihar’s chanakya Nitish Kumar as their CM face. Nitish Kumar was the poster boy of NDA in Bihar. Post election results, BJP didn’t show colour of political opportunism, which does not suit the political strategy of BJP in Bihar, and remain stuck to Nitish for CM vow.
In Maharashtra, BJP had no such vow to take care of, betrayal of which may hover on the borders of political opportunism.
But PM Modi and Amit Shah decided to crown Eknath Shinde as CM to junk the political narrative of Uddhav Thackeray that had painted BJP and Devendra Fadnavis as power hungry party and politician. In order to nail the politics of political opportunism shown by Uddhav Thackeray, BJP adopted the Bihar model in Maharashtra then.
2024 BIG HINT LIES IN AMIT SHAH’S TALK
As the Mahayuti came to power throne with a bang, will the thumb rule of India’s electoral democracy will play out or the Bihar model will rerun.
Now sample the statement of Amit Shah.
As per senior BJP leader Raoshaeb Danve, Amit Shah had said the following on who will become the next chief minister of Maharashtra.
“I was present at the meeting where our leader Amit Shah said the elections will be fought under the leadership of Chief Minister Eknath Shinde. At the same time, he said the decision regarding the chief ministerial post will be taken jointly by leaders of the three parties after the election,” he said.
The statement of RaoSaheb Danve about Union HM Amit Shah’s commitment on next CM drops the following clues.
- The fight to win the 15th Assembly election of Maharashtra fought under the captainship of Eknath Shinde.
- This shows Eknath Shinde was the captain of the Mahayuti in the battlefield.
- Be it in war, politics or sports, captain who won the battle always get rewarded.
- But it is also true that in politics, each word has its significance and relevance.
- The words of Amit Shah that next CM will be decided after poll win assumes significance.
- Amit did say that CM will be decided after polls. He didn’t mention that CM will be chosen after seeing the numbers.
- The politics here is had Amit Shah declared that largest party would stake claim to the CM post, it would have dented the morale of Shiv Sena cadre and voters alike. and if vice versa, then the same would have held true on the BJP cadre, too.
- And the mega win of Mahayuti today could not have been possible when they were fighting the battle with their back to the wall then, especially after the stunning show by MVA in LS polls 2024.
- So, Chanakya Amit Shah didn’t open his cards up then, when winning was the sole strategy.
The BOTTOMLINE here is with a massive win and majority under the captainship of Eknath Shinde, PM Modi and Amit Shah seem unlikely to ditch the captain of the winning team. It could be possible that In Maharashtra, BJP could implement the ‘1996 Uttar Pradesh Model’ of sharing CM ship for 2.5 years each.
