Even though the fear of arrest in the infamous Adarsh building scam prompted senior Congress leader and former chief minister Ashok Chavan (65) to join the protective fold of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), it is not the sole reason for his decision. Over the past several months, discontent has been brewing within the Maharashtra Pradesh Congress Committee (MPCC) regarding the handling of the party's affairs by Rahul Gandhi.
Rahul Gandhi imposed Nana Patole (60), a former BJP Member of Parliament, as the president of MPCC three years ago, much to the chagrin of senior loyalists like Ashok Chavan, Prithviraj Chavan, Balasaheb Thorat, and others. Many of these leaders felt that Rahul Gandhi lacked trust in them to lead the MPCC, leading him to outsource a leader from the BJP to head the party in Maharashtra. It's a different matter that Patole has proven ineffective in galvanizing the organisation.
Additionally, many state Congress leaders faced challenges in accessing Rahul Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi. Prithviraj Chavan, a former Union minister and ex-CM, openly stated that he had to wait for months to secure an appointment with the Gandhis. Evidently, there is a significant communication gap between Congress leaders in the state and the central leadership of the Congress.
Apparently, every request had to be routed through KC Venugopal, AICC general secretary, who lacks the political savvy of figures like RK Dhawan or ML Fotedar, the twin assistants to the late Indira Gandhi. With the party being away from power for an extended period, except for the brief tenure of the Maha Vikas Aghadi, a strong feeling of ennui has overtaken the state Congress, with the central leaders hardly extending any help to salvage the grim situation.
By persuading Ashok Chavan to cross over, Devendra Fadnavis, the Machiavelli of Maharashtra, has further weakened the opposition in the state. By stating that "khel abhi baaki hai" (the game is not over yet), he has indicated that more Congress bigwigs are likely to join the BJP. The BJP is not politically attacking the opposition; instead, it is systematically using the Enforcement Directorate (ED) to strike fear into the minds of opposition leaders, compelling them to defect.
Only Shiv Sena (UBT), led by Uddhav Thackeray, is making frontal attacks on the BJP and even taking up issues such as that of Bilkis Bano, risking alienation from its hardcore Hindutva support base. Although the BJP had Shiv Sena (UBT) spokesperson Sanjay Raut arrested, it has not dampened his enthusiasm to target PM Modi through his daily press conferences and vitriolic editorials in the party mouthpiece "Saamna." According to sources, the BJP plans to move against Uddhav and his son Aaditya closer to the Lok Sabha elections to realize its goal of an "opposition mukt" Maharashtra, aiming to secure at least 40 of the 48 seats in the kitty of the Maha Yuti led by it.
