Prime Minister Narendra Modi met the MLAs of the BJP-led Mahayuti alliance running the Maharashtra government during his visit to Mumbai on Wednesday and gave them the mantra of “good governance”, shortly after he commissioned two warships and a submarine to the nation at the Naval Dockyard in Mumbai.
PM Modi met the MLAs of the ruling Mahayuti, comprising the BJP, the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena, and the Ajit Pawar-led NCP, at a luncheon meeting organised in the auditorium of the Indian Navy’s shore base establishment, INS Angre, in Colaba, Mumbai. The location is not very far from the Naval Dockyard, where PM Modi commissioned three warships on Wednesday morning.
Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, Deputy Chief Minister Eknath Shinde of the Shiv Sena, and Deputy CM Ajit Pawar of the NCP, along with most other Mahayuti MLAs were present at the luncheon meeting.
Sources said that a message was sent on Tuesday to all the MLAs of the ruling Mahayuti alliance to be present at the Vidhan Bhavan at 9 am on Wednesday morning, from where they would be taken to the Naval Dockyard by bus. This information was not officially conveyed through the Mahayuti parties, and instead the Legislative Assembly as well as Legislative Council members were given verbal instructions on Tuesday.
Deputy CM Eknath Shinde spoke about the political significance of the meeting, stating “PM Modi will guide the Mahayuti MLAs. The people have given us a landslide mandate and, hence, our responsibility has also increased. Today, we discussed our party’s organisation, decisions, and the forthcoming local bodies elections. The PM has continuously supported our government and that’s the reason why our government did well during the last two-and-a-half years. That’s why people gave us such a huge majority.”
Meanwhile, BJP sources hinted that the PM’s luncheon meeting marks the beginning of steps to finetune a strategy to win the forthcoming elections to local civic bodies in Maharashtra. Such a strategy is already being prepared to ensure that the Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena is ousted from the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) as well as other local civic bodies in Maharashtra. The idea is to experiment with a so-called “triple engine government”, so that the Mahayuti parties get to run the entire political chain of command, right from the central government to the state government, down to the local civic bodies at the grassroots levels.
Sources said that unlike earlier, when central leaders always left local polls to the state units, the BJP led by Modi and Shah believes that elections and seats matter at every level, including the village panchayat level. As a matter of fact, sources said that Union Minister Amit Shah had recently said, “From Panchayat to Parliament, the BJP should ensure the opposition gets no seat”.
Sources said that the luncheon meeting of Mahayuti MLAs with the PM on Wednesday at the INS Angre auditorium is expected to help finetune such a panchayat-to-parliament “triple engine government” strategy to be deployed during the forthcoming local civic body elections in Maharashtra, which is expected to be held in around four months.
According to sources, in the last three decades, the BMC has been ruled by the Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena, and the civic body is known to be the party’s main “resource”. The BJP has never been able to come to power in the BMC on its own. The BJP has always played second fiddle to the Shiv Sena. However, the major Mahayuti victory in the 2024 Maharashtra Assembly elections has given the BJP an advantage, and the party plans to beat the Thackeray-led Shiv Sena and take control of the BMC. The Mumbai BJP has set a target of winning 151 seats out of the total 227 in the BMC, sources said.