The selected cartoons appeared first in other publications, either in print or online, or on social media, and are credited appropriately.
In today’s featured cartoon, Alok Nirantar comments on the political turmoil in Maharashtra, which saw the former Maha Vikas Aghadi government — a coalition of the Shiv Sena, the Nationalist Congress Party and the Congress — brought down by a rebellion of Sena MLAs. It was expected that the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) Devendra Fadnavis, the leader of the opposition and a former CM, would then take the reins in alliance with the rebels. But in a surprise move, he announced that Sena rebel leader Eknath Shinde would get the CM’s chair and the BJP, despite having many more MLAs, would only support the new government from outside. Then, in a second twist, the BJP’s central leadership intervened and got Fadnavis to take the deputy CM’s post under Shinde.
In a similar vein, Manjul alludes to Fadnavis’s triumph over the MVA government that had unseated him in 2019, but also takes a jibe at how he had to settle for being deputy CM this time.
Playing on one of the MVA government’s last acts — renaming the cities of Aurangabad and Osmanabad to Sambhajinagar and Dharashiv, respectively — E.P. Unny illustrates Fadnavis’s last-minute surprise move of announcing Shinde as the CM.
R. Prasad refers to the Shiv Sena’s founder, the late Bal Thackeray — a political cartoonist himself — while commenting on Eknath Shinde’s victory over Thackeray’s son, Sena chief and former CM Uddhav Thackeray. Both claim to be carrying on the elder Thackeray’s legacy.
Sandeep Adhwaryu draws on the Shiv Sena’s tiger logo to take a dig at the twists and turns in Maharashtra’s political drama.