Maha Vikas Aghadi mulls pre-emptive strike at the BJP

Having established itself firmly in Maharashtra, Shiv Sena-NCP-Congress 'Maha Vikas Aghadi' is mulling its own version of 'Operation Kamala' to ward off any attempts by the BJP to de-stabilise the Uddhav Thackeray-led government in the state.

A view within the coalition managers is that the BJP needs to be given a taste of its own medicine to ensure that it does not resort to poaching legislators from the three-party coalition, like it did in Karnataka to bring down the Congress-JDS government led by Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy.

“We need to stun the BJP before they strike at us,” a senior Aghadi leader said.

The Aghadi leadership is particularly wary of senior NCP leader Ajit Pawar, who had shocked one and all by helping Devendra Fadnavis return as chief minister, albeit briefly, by accepting the post of the deputy chief minister for himself.

Another Aghadi leader did not rule out the possibility of Ajit Pawar doing an encore, contending that a large section of the NCP legislators owed allegiance to him, but were only wary of being on the wrong side of NCP supremo Sharad Pawar, who is considered to enjoy tremendous goodwill across the state.

Ahead of the assembly elections, a large number of Congress and NCP leaders had either joined the Shiv Sena or the BJP in the hope that the saffron alliance was sure to return to power in the state, given Prime Minister Narendra Modi's stunning victory in the Lok Sabha elections in May.

The then Leader of the Opposition in the Maharashtra Assembly Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil, senior leader Harshvardhan Patil, Nitesh Rane, among others had joined the BJP after quitting the Congress ahead of the state elections. Similarly, Shivendra Raje Bhosale, Ganesh Naik, Vaibhav Pichad were among those to desert the NCP to join the BJP.

Neither the Congress nor the NCP has given any clear signals of the return of the prodigals, but both the parties appear keen to give the BJP a jolt by taking advantage of the discontent among its leaders such as Eknath Khadse, Vinod Tawde, Pankaja Munde. The trio was sidelined in the BJP as Fadnavis sought to tighten his grip on the party, and are now keen to settle scores with the former chief minister.

The Aghadi leaders agree on one thing – to give BJP a jolt right now to ensure that it does not return to haunt the nascent coalition anytime soon.