After much dragging of feet and birth pangs the Maharashtra coalition of Shiv Sena, NCP and Congress has achieved the allocation of portfolios. Much time has been lost and there is a feeling that while Uddhav Thackeray is the chief minister, it is Sharad Pawar who is perhaps calling the shots. The Congress as of now seems reconciled to a smaller role with the chief ministership and the Home portfolio in Shiv Sena’s net, and Finance going to the NCP. The Congress has had to remain content with Revenue. It clearly is a marriage of convenience which may hold out until one party feels that enough is enough. There are voices emerging already of the need for the Shiv Sena and the BJP to forge close links again. That such a view has come from Shiv Sena senior leader Manohar Joshi is significant because Joshi was the State’s chief minister in an earlier avatar. From BJP’s side too there have been some overtures to Uddhav which have not gone unnoticed. The meeting between Uddhav and Prime Minister Modi at Pune airport recently apparently led to a measure of bonhomie and nostalgia over a 30-year record of alliance partnership between them. That it was followed soon after by the Shiv Sena voting with the BJP in the Lok Sabha on the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill sparked speculation.
That the Shiv Sena was forced to reverse its stand and walk out of the Rajya Sabha when it came to voting on the Bill was a clear result of Congress blackmail with a veiled threat to pull out of the Maharashtra coalition if the Sena stuck to its support for the Bill in the upper House. By its reversal of stand, the Shiv Sena has looked severely compromised and vulnerable to pressures from its new-found allies who were once its sworn enemies. How long the hesitant honeymoon between the Sena and the Congress will last may be difficult to say but there are straws in the wind already. A break and the consequent pullout from the coalition may be too early to speculate on but the seeds have been sown not only by this but also by the Congress resentment over the overpowering role of the NCP in the new scheme of things. The Maharashtra government will indeed be hard put to establishing its credibility with the bureaucracy in the light of the co-ordination problems that are anticipated to occur between the new alliance partners.
