Even as Devendra Fadnavis was sworn in and Chief Minister in Mumbai, newspapers across the city speculated on Uddhav Thackeray's imminent ascend to Chief Ministership.
"Uddhav Thackeray set to become Chief Minister," screamed one headline. "Will he take direct control?" speculated another. "Uddhav Sarkar but not by remote," said a third. None, it seems had considered that Devendra Fadnavis would emerge the winner of this particular race.
For those still out of the loop, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) turned its tables on rivals with a faction of Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) breaking away under Sharad Pawar's nephew Ajit Pawar and forming the government under the leadership of Devendra Fadnavis in the wee hours of Saturday morning. NCP leader Ajit Pawar was sworn-in as the deputy chief minister at Raj Bhavan.
Reminiscent of the 1948 "Dewey Defeats Truman" banner headline run by the Chicago Tribune (then called the Chicago Daily Tribune) the newspapers were a tad early.
Truman incidentally won the electoral vote by a 303–189–39 majority over Dewey. The Republican-leaning paper which once called Truman a "nincompoop" found it incomprehensible that he had a chance of winning. Their first edition, of which around 150,000 copies were printed thus confidently said that Dewey "won a sweeping victory in the presidential election yesterday". It also reported Republican control of the House of Representatives and claimed that the Senate that would work with him. The headline was made more popular after Truman famously held up the newspaper triumphantly at a public appearance after his election.
More recently, Hillary Clinton was declared "Madam President" by Newsweek.
The times, it would appear, haven't changed greatly yet. And while Devendra Fadnavis is yet to strike a victorious pose, Twitter is more than making up for it.
As one Twitter user put it, "Every newspaper in Maharashtra has a joke written on its front page today."
Take a look:
