Recent political events in Maharashtra have a local and national significance for the ruling BJP’s strategy. At the national level, it is an attempt to bridge its ally deficit in politically crucial States and simultaneously weaken the prime movers of the Opposition coalition, like the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) strongman Sharad Pawar. A major anxiety for the BJP in the run-up to the 2024 Lok Sabha polls is that while it has consolidated in Uttar Pradesh with 80 Lok Sabha seats, uncertainty plagues two other important States – Bihar with 40 seats of which BJP had won 39 in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls in alliance with the Janata Dal (United) and Maharashtra where it won 41 of the 48 seats with undivided Shiv Sena.

JD(U) has since jumped ship to form an opposition government in Bihar and in Maharashtra, Sharad Pawar engineered a novel coalition with the Shiv Sena and the Congress to form the Maharashtra Vikas Agadi (MVA) government in 2019. The BJP hit back in Maharashtra last year by breaking MVA, or rather Shiv Sena, and engineering the defection of Eknath Shinde who crossed over to be appointed Chief Minister. What transpired last Sunday was Part II of the BJP’s strategy to shore up its prospects in Maharashtra by poaching the top brass of the NCP, who have now joined the Shinde-led NDA government.

This serves two purposes for the BJP. First, it weakens Sharad Pawar who has lost loyalists such as Dilip Walse Patil, Hasan Mushrif, and his nephew Ajit Pawar who holds a sway over the party and enjoys popular support in western Maharashtra. Second, it secures the Maharashtra government in the event of the Assembly Speaker disqualifying 16 MLAs including Chief Minister Shinde, after the Supreme Court left this decision to the Speaker. The SC had, in a verdict last month, paved the way for disqualification proceedings against Shinde for defection from the Shiv Sena and held that the then Governor erred in calling for a trust vote which triggered the fall of the Uddhav Thackeray-led MVA government in mid-2022. While this threat looms over the Shinde government, the entry of Ajit Pawar and his MLAs ensures its stability.

The prospect of central agencies probing various scams involving NCP MLAs may have catalysed the latest round of defections. Be that as it may, the latest developments underscore BJP’s maximalist approach, as the 2024 general elections draw near. The drive to rebuild alliances across States has begun. After Maharashtra, the party has set its eyes on Bihar where smaller parties such as Jitan Ram Manjhi’s Hindustani Awam Morcha have joined hands with the BJP. In Telangana, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has accused the Bharat Rashtriya Samiti (BRS) of being the “B Team” of the BJP. In Andhra Pradesh, the TDP and the YSRCP are favourably inclined towards the BJP. Opposition parties will have a lot to discuss when they meet in Bengaluru on July 17-18.

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