Assembly elections are proposed in Maharashtra in October. At present, the state is governed by the Mahayuti or NDA alliance under the leadership of Eknath Shinde. Apart from Shinde’s Shiv Sena, it includes BJP and Ajit Pawar’s NCP. Elections are near but there is silence in the Mahayuti alliance on who will be the face of the Chief Minister in the next elections. However, the leaders of the alliance have announced to hold joint election rallies from August 20. These rallies are being held jointly so that the message can be conveyed to the public that the Mahayuti is united.
However, reports of rift between the two constituents of the Mahayuti, Chief Minister Shinde’s Shiv Sena and Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar’s NCP, are common. Despite this, efforts are being made to show unity. On the other hand, a senior BJP leader has clarified the situation by saying that even though Shinde is the Chief Minister of the state, when it comes to political dominance, Devendra Fadnavis’s stature is higher than him. In such a situation, the question arises that why does the BJP not declare Devendra Fadnavis as the next CM face?
In fact, just as BJP finds Devendra Fadnavis to be the most saleable face, Shiv Sena finds Eknath Shinde and NCP finds Ajit Pawar to be the most saleable face. Therefore, the Mahayuti alliance is treading cautiously on this issue because if any of the three faces is announced, the parties led by the other two faces may get angry. By the way, in the 2019 elections, BJP contested the elections by declaring Devendra Fadnavis as the CM face. At that time, there was an undivided Shiv Sena with BJP, but as soon as the elections were over, there was a rift between the two parties over the CM post and both parted ways. Earlier, Fadnavis had been the Chief Minister for five years from 2014 to 2019.
On the other hand, the situation is the same in the opposition Mahavikas Aghadi alliance. There too, the CM face has not been announced, while Uddhav Thackeray’s Shiv Sena leader Sanjay Raut has demanded it. Recently, Uddhav Thackeray was on a three-day visit to Delhi with his son Aditya Thackeray. It is believed that there is a dispute between Shiv Sena and Congress over seat sharing and CM face. Therefore, Mahavikas Aghadi i.e. MVA is also facing the same confusion like NDA. The big thing is that Shiv Sena on both sides (Shinde’s army in Mahayuti and Uddhav’s army in Mahavikas Aghadi) is creating a problem over the CM face.
While Shinde is the Chief Minister of the current coalition government and does not want to give up his claim to the CM post if the coalition returns to power again, Uddhav Thackeray is a former Chief Minister and he also does not want to give up his old status. In the recent Lok Sabha elections, Congress won 13 seats, while Shiv Sena (UBT) won 9 seats and NCP (SP) won 8 seats. The interesting thing is that Congress contested only 17 seats, while NCP (SP) contested 10 and Shiv Sena (UBT) contested 21 seats. Therefore, Congress is thinking that it has an upper hand, but Uddhav’s team says that there is no face in MVA to compete with Uddhav.
