scorecardresearch
Tuesday, July 22, 2025
Support Our Journalism
HomePoliticsFadnavis is centre stage in Maharashtra again. How 'modern-day Abhimanyu' broke the...

Fadnavis is centre stage in Maharashtra again. How ‘modern-day Abhimanyu’ broke the ‘chakravyuh’

Fadnavis was face of BJP’s campaign in Maharashtra & under his leadership, party won 132 seats. With this massive sweep, he is now popular choice among party workers as CM choice..

Follow Us :
Text Size:

Mumbai: Ahead of the Maharashtra assembly election, a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader close to Devendra Fadnavis was talking about how the Deputy Chief Minister’s aides had informally consulted astrologers on his ‘kundali’ (birth chart).

“His stars have not been bright since 2019 and the kundali says that’s going to be the case till about 2026,” the BJP leader told ThePrint.

To his point, Fadnavis had indeed seen a string of political upsets since 2019when he could not form a BJP government in Maharashtra despite his party being the single largest; when he had to resign as CM within 72 hours because his government lacked the numbers; when he wanted to stay out of the Eknath Shinde-led government in 2022 but was asked to take the charge of a deputy; and when under his leadership, the BJP posted a dismal performance in this year’s Lok Sabha election.

So, on Saturday, as the BJP recorded its best-ever win in Maharashtra with an impressive strike, Fadnavis was beaming.

“I am modern-day Abhimanyu. I can break through the chakravyuh,” Fadnavis told reporters.

Fadnavis was the face of the BJP’s campaign in Maharashtra, and under his leadership, the party fought 149 seats of which it won 132. With a massive sweep, he is now also the popular choice among the BJP workers for the CM post.

Speaking to reporters at the CM’s official residence, Varsha, at Mumbai’s Malabar Hill, Fadnavis, however, deflected that question. “Amit Shah had clearly said that the CM post will not be decided based on any formula. The party leadership will take a call after discussions with the leaders of our alliance parties,” he said.

In Maharashtra, the BJP is part of the Mahayuti, which includes the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena and the Ajit Pawar-led Nationalist Congress Party.

If he does take up the CM’s post, Fadnavis would have come a full circle — from a leader fallen in disgrace after a smug campaign of ‘Me Punha Yein‘ (I’ll be back) in the run-up to the 2019 Maharashtra assembly elections, and a desperate 80-hour government, to the man of the moment, at the centrestage of Maharashtra’s politics today.


Also Read: In Maharashtra, both national parties set records—BJP its best ever tally, Congress its worst ever


Fadnavis under the spotlight

Sources in the BJP have told ThePrint on multiple occasions that Fadnavis had lost favour with the party leadership for some time after his failure to form a BJP government in Maharashtra after the 2019 election, despite the party emerging as single-largest in the assembly.

The reason for BJP’s inability to form government at the time was the Shiv Sena walking out of its alliance with the BJP after the election, alleging that it was reneging on the promise of sharing all posts, including the CM’s chair, equally. The Shiv Sena eventually cobbled together an alliance of ideological rivals, the Congress and the NCP, to keep the BJP out of power.

Fadnavis’ political capital took a further hit after his failed attempt to form a government with the support of a faction of NCP MLAs under Ajit Pawar, and a rushed midnight oath-taking ceremony. The government lasted only for 80 hours, as Pawar and others returned to their party camp.

However, the BJP leader has bounced back since then, helming the party’s campaign for major victories in the assembly elections in Bihar and Goa in 2020 and 2022, and the Rajya Sabha and the MLC elections in Maharashtra in 2022, which kicked off the Maha Vikas Aghadi’s turmoil and was followed by a vertical split in the Shiv Sena.

According to political observers, Fadnavis also worked hard to strengthen the party’s base in Maharashtra since the formation of the MVA government under Uddhav Thackeray, extensively traveling during the two waves of the Covid pandemic, and also taking stock on the ground after floods in different parts of the state last year.

Fadnavis also kept the MVA government on its toes with scathing criticism of its governance, and using his influence within the state’s bureaucracy to target the government with official records on issues such as the Aarey Metro car shed, the Sachin Waze case, and an alleged IPS transfers and postings racket.

The various probes by central agencies such as the Enforcement Directorate, Income Tax Department and the Central Bureau of Investigation against more than a dozen MVA leaders further boosted Fadnavis’ tireless attacks on the Aghadi.

“Fadnavis turned out to be a very successful Opposition leader. He constantly had tours, programmes, and kept the MVA government on the back foot with his criticisms. In the entire duration of the MVA government, he was setting the narrative for the political discourse and constantly tried to expose the rifts between the three parties of the MVA,” political analyst Hemant Desai told ThePrint.

Desai added: ”While Thackeray earned goodwill as CM from Maharashtra’s people at large, he had a few shortcomings, such as his (lack of) administrative acumen, inability to take everyone along as a CM. He did not pay as much attention to the party organisation as needed, and his health issues were a major disadvantage for him.”

When the Shiv Sena and the NCP had a vertical split in 2022 and 2023, Fadnavis was seen as among the key players behind the political turmoil within Maharashtra’s regional parties to strengthen the BJP’s position in the state.

Before the Lok Sabha elections, Fadnavis had told ThePrint that the parties imploded on their own because of their internal problems. Eknath Shinde walked out of the Thackeray-led Shiv Sena because Uddhav Thackeray did not like his rise and wanted to cut him to size, he said. Similarly, Ajit Pawar walked out of the Sharad Pawar-led NCP because the octogenarian preferred his daughter over his nephew as the party’s successor.

“The BJP did not cause the splits. But, we took political advantage of the situation,” he said.

Fadnavis’ rise within BJP ranks

Fadnavis’ clout within the BJP started surging after 2013, when the party appointed him as the state president at a time when senior leaders such as Gopinath Munde and Nitin Gadkari were trying to push their own candidates. Fadnavis was seen as someone who did not belong to any particular camp.

He gradually became the face of the BJP in Maharashtra, after his appointment as CM in 2014, even though there was a clamour from Gadkari supporters for their leader to take the top post. Fadnavis’ became the choice since the party leadership wanted to avoid creating a parallel powercentre to Modi in Gadkari, said party sources.

Since then, over the last eight years, Fadnavis has tightened his hold over the Maharashtra BJP, distancing old guards such as Vinod Tawde, Eknath Khadse and Pankaja Munde, who could have potentially challenged his position within the party.

Khadse eventually quit the party, blaming Fadnavis, and joined the NCP (Sharatchandra Pawar). The party leadership, however, rehabilitated Tawde and Munde as national secretaries. Tawde, who had faced allegations of distributing cash a day before the polls Wednesday, was eventually elevated to the role of a national general secretary in 2021.

With the Mahayuti comfortably poised to form a government in Maharashtra with the BJP in the lead, the “modern-day Abhimanyu” seems to have stemmed not just the BJP’s downslide in the state. Seemingly, he has also outwitted his stars.

(Edited by Tony Rai)


Also Read: As ‘people’s court’ pronounces verdict in Sena vs Sena, what’s next for Uddhav & Shinde


 

Subscribe to our channels on YouTube, Telegram & WhatsApp

Support Our Journalism

India needs fair, non-hyphenated and questioning journalism, packed with on-ground reporting. ThePrint – with exceptional reporters, columnists and editors – is doing just that.

Sustaining this needs support from wonderful readers like you.

Whether you live in India or overseas, you can take a paid subscription by clicking here.

Support Our Journalism

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here

Most Popular