Shortly after Eknath Shinde tendered his resignation as Maharashtra Chief Minister to Maharashtra Governor C P Radhakrishnan at the Raj Bhavan here on Tuesday, 11 am, he was asked by the Governor to head a caretaker government, until a Mahayuti cabinet is sworn-in.
The swearing-in date of the BJP-dominated Mahayuti government has not been decided, but the word is that it could be Wednesday or even scheduled for December 1 or December 2.
Earlier today, NCP chief Ajit Pawar and Devendra Fadnavis reached the Governor’s office to tender their resignations as well. However, despite Devendra Fadnavis being widely acknowledged to be the frontrunner for the post of Maharashtra Chief Minister, the Mahayuti is yet to officially decide or announce its chief ministerial candidate.
Shinde’s and Shiv Sena’s insistence that a “Bihar model” of power sharing must be implemented in Maharashtra is said to be the main reason behind the delay in the Mahayuti officially announcing its CM candidate. As per the “Bihar model”, Nitish Kumar became CM despite other alliance partners like the BJP winning more seats than his Janata Dal (United). Adopting the same model in Maharashtra would mean ceding the CM’s post to Eknath Shinde.
The BJP leadership is also keen to get the caste arithmetic right, since Eknath Shinde who hails from western Maharashtra’s Satara district, belongs to the politically dominant Maratha community which constitutes a good 28 per cent of the state’s population.
Shinde had provided ten per cent reservation to the Maratha community under the economically and socially backward category and hence Maratha caste sentiments would have to be taken into account, especially since the Mahayuti wishes to win the soon- to- be held local body polls in Maharashtra. Moreover, there is a demand from the Maratha community that the state’s CM should be a Maratha.
There is also the “Marathi asmita” or Marathi pride factor which the BJP is keen to accommodate, especially since it wants to ensure that the Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena never gets any opportunity to claim that “Marathi asmita” was insulted by the Mahayuti and then make it a political issue in Maharashtra to strengthen itself.
Meanwhile, the Ajit Pawar-led NCP has indicated its approval of Mahayuti’s decision to go with Devendra Fadnavis as the Mhief minister of the Mahayuti government, and Fadnavis is its preferred choice over Shiv Sena chief Eknath Shinde.
The Ajit-Pawar-led NCP’s calculation is that despite winning lesser seats (Ajit Pawar-NCP won 41 assembly seats) than the Eknath Shinde-led Sena (57 seats), Fadnavis as CM, would place it at the same level with the Shinde-led Sena in the Mahayuti equation.