Cabinet reshuffle: The BJP-Sena gulf widens

With his new clout, Narayan Rane will undoubtedly make life difficult for the Maha Vikas Aghadi government, but he is not the strongman he once was

When Narayan Rane left the Shiv Sena in 2005, party chief Bal Thackeray wrote a blistering editorial in his newspaper Saamna, tracing the origins of his former blue-eyed boy to the "Harya-Narya" gang (Narya - short for Narayan) of the suburb of Chembur, and later, taunting him as "kombdi chor" (chicken thief). The reason for Thackeray's vicious attack on the man he had appointed CM in 1999 was Rane's open criticism of the growing clout in the party of heir-apparent Uddhav Thackeray.

Hence, Wednesday's Union Cabinet reshuffle, where the Maratha from Konkan was the first of the new ministers to take oath, puts the final seal on the rift between the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Uddhav Thackeray-headed Shiv Sena.

In the fortnight leading up to the reshuffle, the two erstwhile allies were seen to be making up. Both former CM Devendra Fadnavis, constantly on the offensive against the Sena, and Sena spokesman Sanjay Raut, known for his acid one-liners against the BJP, had suddenly turned doveish. It was even reported that the Cabinet reshuffle was delayed to accommodate the Sena.

But it was the Sena who sent the first signal of the reunion being off, with the suspension of 12 BJP MLAs for a year, after they abused and misbehaved with the Speaker on the first day of the Maharashtra Assembly session on Monday. The next day, Uddhav Thackeray couldn't have been blunter when he dismissed talk of a reunion by pointing out that 30 years in the alliance hadn't resulted in them coming together, so what could happen now.

It was back to business as usual on Wednesday when the Enforcement Directorate (ED) arrested the son-in-law of Eknath Khadse, the former BJP Maratha leader who'd been expected to become chief minister in 2014 after Gopinath Munde's sudden death. Number two in the Fadnavis ministry, his career came to an abrupt end after he was forced to resign over a series of allegations, all of which turned out to be untrue. A six-term MLA, Khadse failed to get a ticket from his party for the 2019 Assembly elections and last year joined the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP).

A Maratha from Konkan, Rane headed the committee set up by the Congress-NCP government in 2014 that recommended 16 per cent Maratha reservation, now rejected by the Supreme Court, leaving the influential community angry. With his new clout as a Union cabinet minister, he will undoubtedly make life difficult for the Maha Vikas Aghadi government. But Rane is not the strongman he once was. His influence helped his son win, and the BJP gain entry into Konkan, a Sena base, in the 2019 Assembly polls. But Rane himself lost the seat that he had represented six times in 2014 and could not win in the bypoll held a year later. Both times, the Sena defeated him.

Not everyone in the BJP would be happy with Rane's induction. In 2017, ex-MP Kirit Somaiya had wanted the ED to investigate his alleged scams. It never did. Like Rane, two of the other three Maharashtrians inducted into the cabinet are also turncoats from the NCP and Sena.

The Cabinet reshuffle was the climax of a packed week in Maharashtra politics and signalled the start of an intensified attack on the MVA government. But for at least one section of citizens, the week's developments spelt relief. For Muslims, who constitute 10 per cent of the state's population, the spectre of the BJP back in power was not a pleasant one. Though Devendra Fadnavis' five-year regime had turned out to be a pleasant surprise - apart from the beef ban - given the former CM's RSS background, there was no guarantee that another stint of BJP rule would be as smooth, seeing the way the party had gone about implementing its core agenda since it got re-elected in 2019.

But it was not just fear of the BJP that had seen Muslims - and indeed, other Hindutva-opponents - keep their fingers crossed over the last fortnight. It was also a desire to see the government headed by Uddhav Thackeray continue. Even 19 months after taking over, the son and political heir of the demagogue known for his anti-Muslim rhetoric, who built up his party as a lumpen force against Muslims and "outsiders", remains the complete opposite of his father.

Notwithstanding their discontent about the CM's refusal to relax Covid-19 restrictions for the second consecutive year for Bakr-Id, or the failed promise of 4 per cent Muslim reservation (part of the coalition's Common Minimum Programme), Muslims in Maharashtra feel a sense of security unknown to their compatriots in BJP-ruled states. Giving up on other demands is a small price to pay.

(Jyoti Punwani is a Mumbai-based journalist)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author’s own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.