The efforts of the BJP's central leadership to mend relations with allies in the aftermath of the drubbing in Karnataka don't seem to be going well.
A day after the AIADMK's outburst, friction between the Maharashtra ruling partners — chief minister Eknath Shinde and his BJP deputy Devendra Fadnavis — has spread concern in Delhi.
The BJP's central leadership had to send a stern message to Shinde, who heads a faction of the Shiv Sena, after an advertisement was published in Maharashtra newspapers on Tuesday with the tagline: “Modi for India, Shinde for Maharashtra.”
What left the BJP leadership fuming was the fact that the advertisement put out by the Shinde-headed Maharashtra government left out deputy chief minister Fadnavis, the face of the saffron party in the state.
The advertisement carried pictures of just Modi and Shinde and referred to a survey that indicated that the popularity rating of the chief minister was more than that of his deputy. The survey claimed that 26.1 per cent of the people of Maharashtra wanted Shinde as chief minister while 23.2 per cent wished to see Fadnavis as the next chief minister.
After the ad appeared in newspapers on Tuesday, the central leadership of the BJP intervened and sent out a warning to Shinde, sources said. On Wednesday, another advertisement appeared in newspapers bearing pictures of Shinde and Fadnavis waving. It claimed that the Sena-BJP alliance was preferred by 46.4 per cent of the people in comparison to the Opposition’s 34.6 per cent.
Talking to reporters, Maharashtra BJP president Chandrashekhar Bawankule acknowledged that the first ad had hurt the sentiments of his party leaders and workers but the issue has been resolved.
“It (the first advertisement) definitely hurt the sentiments of BJP leaders and workers but today’s ad shows that the mistake has been corrected. As far as the BJP is concerned, it’s a closed chapter,” Bawankule said.
BJP leaders in Delhi, however, said they were concerned about the development as it showed that relations between the leaders of Maharashtra — Fadnavis and Shinde — were not cordial. They feared that it could harm the party in the Lok Sabha polls next year, followed by the Assembly elections.
Home minister Amit Shah had early this month held a meeting with Shinde and Fadnavis in Delhi in a bid to iron out the differences between the two. After the meeting, Shinde had claimed that all was well between the two partners while stressing that they would contest the Lok Sabha and Assembly polls together.
“The advertisement controversy has shown that all is not well in Maharashtra despite the intervention of Amitbhai,” a BJP leader said.
The BJP, in a bid to pull down the Opposition government in the state led by Uddhav Thackeray, had backed Shinde to engineer a split in the Shiv Sena. After the majority of the Shiv Sena MLAs walked out with Shinde, the BJP rewarded him with the chief minister’s post, hoping to end the political domination of the Thackeray family over the Sena.
In Tamil Nadu, ally AIADMK has lashed out at the BJP after state BJP chief K. Annamalai accused previous dispensations of being corrupt, which the AIADMK construed as an insult to Jayalalithaa.
Post-2019, the BJP has lost almost all its major allies like the Akali Dal, JDU, Shiv Sena (Uddhav faction) and the TDP. The AIADMK and the Shiv Sena faction led by Shinde are only the major allies left in the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance.
