In a day of very fast paced developments, the political picture in Maharashtra has once again completely changed in favour of the Shiv Sena-NCP-Congress alliance. Even insiders in the NCP were not really sure that they would score such a victory literally in the last over of the-proverbial- 20-20 cricket match!
The twist came mainly because of the Supreme Court verdict that came early in the morning asking for an instant and open ballot voting in the assembly to prove the majority in the house and not a delayed and secret vote which could have given rise to horse trading. But this build up became possible because of the show of strength before media by the three parties which was designed by Sharad Pawar himself.
NCP Chief Sharad Pawar and nobody else has turned out to be the Chanakya of this political drama, scoring a victory at the last minute and also ensuring that the BJP suffers a political defeat as well as loses the chance to gain moral high ground. The loss of face that Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis suffered even in the minds of senior supporters and well-wishers of the BJP could have easily been avoided if his party had not decided to go for a mid-night coup by taking its political enemy Ajit Pawar on board to form the government in a frenzy.
The party which always spoke about stalwart leaders like Atal Bihari Vajpayee who did not compromise on ethics and morals even when his government lost the vote of confidence in Lok Sabha by just one vote, went for a compromise by taking Ajit Pawar on board whom they themselves had targeted harshly for over a decade making allegations of corruption against him.
The decision by Sharad Pawar to parade 162 MLAs of the three parties and alliance partners before media and the world at a hotel in Mumbai was badly ridiculed by a prominent BJP leader calling it “child’s play”, but this very act by Sharad Pawar helped the three parties gain new confidence at the crucial stage in this power-play. Pawar’s swift action of holding his MLAs together at Mumbai’s Y.B Chavan centre and then ensuring that the MLAs who were taken away by the BJP to Delhi were brought back right in full view of media, also helped in the perception game among the minds of the public. The BJP was left red-faced with neither power nor high moral ground and was seen as a party whose attempts to break away MLAs from other parties failed.
The BJP’s heist in making a claim to form the government without ensuring that they had enough MLAs with them turned out to be the big blunder and organising a celebration in Mumbai with drums being played and sweets being distributed was even a bigger blunder. Shiv Sena leader Sanjay Raut said on Tuesday evening that everything that the world is seeing now was part of a plan, hinting that it was Sharad Pawar who was behind Ajit Pawar first going to the BJP and then withdrawing from there! The world will never know whether Raut’s claim was true or not but one thing is for sure and that is that the architect of this new alliance and the new government is none other than NCP Chief Sharad Pawar, the real Chanakya of today’s India.
The BJP’s hurry in making a claim to form the government without ensuring that they had enough MLAs with them turned out to be the big blunder and organising a public celebration in Mumbai was even a bigger blunder. Shiv Sena leader Sanjay Raut said on Tuesday evening that everything people are now seeing was part of a plan by one Chanakya, hinting that it was Sharad Pawar who was behind Ajit Pawar first going to the BJP and then withdrawing from there! The world will never come to know whether Raut’s claim is true or Ajit Pawar rebelled on his own, but it’s a fact that the architect of this new alliance and the new government is none other than NCP Chief Sharad Pawar, the real Chanakya of today’s India.