In the morning, the Bharatiya Janata Party appeared to have outwitted everyone to come to power in Maharashtra. Hours later, Nationalist Congress Party Chief Sharad Pawar seems to have engineered a comeback. And it’s still not over yet.
His nephew Ajit Pawar, the man at the centre of the drama, was sacked as the legislature party leader by the NCP on Saturday evening. That dealt a blow to the BJP’s math as the party had claimed support from at least 35 NCP legislators after Governor Bhagat Singh Koshyari administered oath to Devendra Fadnavis as chief minister and Ajit Pawar as his deputy early in the morning, and asked them to prove majority by Nov. 30.
The BJP with 105 MLAs in a 288-member state assembly had fallen short after Shiv Sena with 56 MLAs split the alliance seeking the chief minister’s post. Last night, Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray had emerged as the consensus leader for the alliance between the Shiv Sena, the NCP (54) and the Congress (44). But things changed overnight.
No one knew when the BJP and Ajit Pawar staked claim, and when the President’s Rule in the state was revoked—it later turned out that the notification came at 5:47 a.m. In fact, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s congratulatory twitter post broke the news to most people in the morning, setting off a day packed with drama.
Sharad Pawar and Thackeray went into damage control, calling a joint press conference. Pawar senior called his nephew’s decision to support the BJP his personal call and threatened action against him, saying the alliance was intact and had the support of NCP.
After series meetings and press conferences, his party’s MLAs who were at the rival camp’s morning oath ceremony started trooping back—at least nine had returned by evening. Sharad Pawar installed loyalist Jayant Patil as the head of the legislative group till a new leader is elected.
Meanwhile, the alliance moved the Supreme Court against the governor’s decision to call Fadnavis to form the government, terming his action “malafide” and “unconstitutional”.
