Devendra Fadnavis-led Maha Yuti govt completes two months in office, but challenges aplenty

Mumbai: It has been two months since the new Maha Yuti-NDA dispensation assumed power in Maharashtra, however, there are still several internal issues within the tri-party alliance involving BJP, Shiv Sena and NCP.

Several things of governance are yet to be sorted out between the three parties even as it is gearing up for the budget session of the Maharashtra Legislature.

Though the BJP-led government has a brute majority, there are challenges ahead for the dispensation.

For BJP's Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, keeping his two deputy CMs Eknath Shinde, the chief leader of Shiv Sena and Ajit Pawar, the NCP president, together is also a major task.

Fadnavis was sworn in as CM and Shinde and Pawar as Deputy CMs on 5 December in Mumbai in presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Mumbai, while the council-of-ministers were sworn in on 15 December coinciding with the Nagpur winter session.

Several leaders of the ruling side as well as the opposition are demanding the ouster of Dhananjay Munde, who is the state food, civil supplies and consumer protection minister, in the wake of the arrest of his close aide Walmik Karad in a Rs two crore extortion case linked to the abduction, torture and murder of Massajog village sarpanch Santosh Deshmukh.

Besides, Munde also faces charges of alleged irregularities when he was the agriculture minister in the previous government and in a case of domestic violence.

Incidentally, Munde is considered close to both Fadnavis and Pawar.

Another issue bothering the alliance is disputes over guardian ministers. Sena's ministers Dada Bhuse, the school education minister and Bharat Gogawale, the employee guarantee minister, were keen on guardianship of Nashik and Raigad districts, respectively.

However, Fadnavis allotted the Nashik district to his close aide and BJP's troubleshooter Girish Mahajan, who is the disaster management minister, while Raigad was given to Aditi Tatkare, the child and women development minister, who is the daughter of state NCP president Sunil Tatkare.

Shinde, who has helmed the state for two-and-a-half-years after he toppled the erstwhile Uddhav Thackeray-led Maha Vikas Aghadi government, is upset over being denied the top job and the all-important home portfolio.

The forthcoming Maharashtra local bodies elections is going to be very important and in many places the three parties will be pitted against each other.

Big cities including Mumbai, Thane, Navi Mumbai, Pune, Pimpri-Chinchwad, Nashik, Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar, Nagpur, Amravati, Kolhapur are among the municipal corporations that would go to polls depending when the Supreme Court decides on the bunch of cases which are pending vis-a-vis the corporation and council elections.

The government is also facing criticism over the custodial death of Somnath Suryawanshi, a law student who was arrested in the wake of the Parbhani violence following the desecration of the symbolic Constitution placed below the statue of Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar.