New Delhi: The BJP’s “overuse” of the Enforcement Directorate (ED) against political adversaries may have earned it the moniker of being an “ED government”.
Referring to that oft-repeated opposition taunt, Maharashtra’s newly-anointed BJP Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis said Monday that the state indeed had an “ED government” – that of Eknath and Devendra.
Former Shiv Sena leader Eknath Shinde, who broke away from the parent party, is chief minister of the new Sena-BJP alliance.
Shinde engineered a coup in the previous Maha Vikas Aghadi government – a coalition of the Shiv Sena, the Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party – to install his faction as the next government’s head, ably supported by the BJP.
Though the BJP had got the highest seats in the 2019 assembly elections – 106 – its long-time partner and Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray broke their three-decade partnership to form the MVA because the BJP denied him the chief minister’s portfolio, even for half the term.
While the rebellion last month inexorably precipitated the MVA’s demise, Devendra Fadnavis was touted to be the next chief minister – his third time in power.
But the party leadership thought otherwise – perhaps to push back criticism that it is forever power hungry.
After winning the trust vote Monday, Fadnavis said: “I tell you today that there will never be a tussle for power in this government. We shall continue to cooperate. People taunt us to be an ED government. Yes, it is an ED government, that of Eknath and Devendra.”
“I would have even sat at home had the party told me to – the same party that made me the chief minister (2014-19),” Fadnavis said of taking up a junior position in the present government.
He said the BJP-Shiv Sena alliance won the mandate in 2019. “But we were deliberately taken away from the majority. With Eknath Shinde, we have once against formed the government in Maharasthra, with the Shiv Sena. A true Shiv Sainik has been made the chief minister,” he said.
Fadnavis also reminded his detractors for not believing that he would come back. “People mocked me when I said I would come back. I have come back today and brought him (Eknath Shinde) with me. I won’t take revenge on the people who mocked me! I will forgive them because things are not taken to heart in politics,” the deputy CM said.
Read more: Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde wins trust vote, set to rule with BJP