New Delhi: Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis resigned Tuesday afternoon, hours after the Supreme Court issued directions for a floor test to be conducted in the state assembly Wednesday.
This paves the way for the installation of a Nationalist Congress Party-Congress-Shiv Sena government that is likely to be headed by Uddhav Thackeray. Fadnavis’ resignation comes as a huge blow and embarrassment to Modi-Shah’s BJP that had engineered an overnight coup in the NCP to rope in Sharad Pawar’s nephew Ajit and form the government early Saturday with Fadnavis as CM and Ajit as his deputy.
Ajit resigned about an hour before Fadnavis on Tuesday, a day after his uncle oversaw the parading of 158 MLAs at the Grand Hyatt hotel in Mumbai. With Ajit loyalists in the NCP deserting him to join his uncle at the Grand Hyatt, the BJP was left with its 105 MLAs in the 288-member state assembly, forcing Fadnavis to put in his papers instead of facing further embarrassment in the floor test.
Fadnavis told reporters that he did not have a majority after Ajit had resigned. He said he hoped the Sena-NCP-Congress alliance would provide a stable government but added that it would be troubled by its own weight.
The fast-paced developments in Maharashtra came as a reminder of similar events in Karnataka in May 2018 when the BJP, which had emerged as the single largest party in the assembly elections, had got B.S. Yediyurappa installed as the chief minister, hoping to engineer defections in the rival camp to cobble up the requisite numbers.
Yediyurappa had to resign within two days as the Supreme Court directed the state governor to hold a floor test in 24 hours and the BJP couldn’t split the opposition. Yediyurappa, however, made a comeback as chief minister in July this year after 17 MLAs from the Congress and the Janata Dal (Secular) defected.
The BJP, however, could be hoping to repeat Karnataka in Maharashtra as the NCP-Congress-Shiv Sena is beset with ideological and political contradictions.
The Congress had initially dithered over joining hands with what it called a communal party, the Sena. The Congress, however, relented later to keep the BJP out of power in Maharashtra, the most industrialised state in India and also home to its financial capital.
Although the three parties have drawn up a common minimum programme and arrived at an agreement over the distribution of ministries, the new government is likely to be constantly confronted with a conflict of interests. Each of them is likely to use their stint in power to expand their political turf at the other’s cost, which would keep putative CM Uddhav Thackeray on tenterhooks.
Also read: Full text of Supreme Court order on Maharashtra floor test