Central agencies and BJP drive MVA alliance partners to unite in Maharashtra

It has been a revelation – to the BJP and everybody else – how adversity can bring differing people with uncommon interests fearful of similar fates together.

Soon after the arrest of Nawab Malik by the Enforcement Directorate, Mumbai saw something it hadn’t seen before. Top ministers in the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government all came together in a morcha-- usually a tool for the opposition-- at the Gandhi statue near Mantralaya in a show of unity that took the BJP aback and reinforced something that is only being remarked upon in recent days. The three alliance partners seem to have no quarrel with each other and they are not about to allow the BJP to divide and rule.

BJP leaders might have believed that they have scalped Malik and the NCP and, startled by the unity, have since been demanding Malik’s resignation from the cabinet. But the NCP which has so far followed in the tradition of the Congress in forcing the resignation of those in public office at the slightest whiff of a scandal, has dug in its heels and refuses to oblige – perhaps drawing lessons from the BJP’s own example, for Narendra Modi as chief minister of Gujarat and later prime minister never paid any heed to any allegation and never sought anyone’s resignation under pressure from the opposition. He even made a man externed from Gujarat and imprisoned for a while his home minister, defying all norms of conventional political behaviour.

Now that precedent being turned upon them has frustrated local BJP leaders, including former chief minister Devendra Fadnavis, former MP Kirit Somaiya and state BJP president Chandrakant Patil, who have been repeating ad nauseum that the MVA government would collapse by March 10.

What startles them is not just the failure of the MVA to act on their demand – thus reinforcing the belief that Malik has been unfairly charged with unsustainable allegations but also the fact that state NCP president Jayant Patil made a big show of visiting Malik’s constituency in Mumbai to assure his voters that he had done nothing wrong and should not be abandoned by them – equally that the NCP will not leave them bereft of a guardian until Malik is released.

It was unusual by most standards for such a rally around a member of their party. So far, Chhagan Bhujbal and Anil Deshmukh are others in the NCP who have had the central agencies act against them, fairly or unfairly, but neither had the good fortune to have the entire MCA stand by them in this manner – only the support of Sharad Pawar, albeit after a long silence in both the cases of Bhujbal and Deshmukh, helped them feel not abandoned. So, what has changed in the case of Malik?

It is obvious that the MVA is now taking on the BJP by means both covert and overt. The filing of an FIR against former Pune police commissioner Rashmi Shukla for tapping the phones of MVA functionaries is a case in point. Without indulging in any form of shock or awe, cases are being built against those considered inimical to the government and this has involved keeping the sons of Narayan Rane and Kirit Somaiya running to the courts for anticipatory bail in cases that could well have them indicted if pursued to the lawful end.

Unlike the ED in the case of Malik or even the corruption charges against Deshmukh and Bhujbal, the government is ensuring that they have watertight cases against those they are targeting so that they do not receive easy acquittals from the courts.

It is only now that the BJP is catching on to what the MVA is doing after Sena MP Sanjay Raut made good on his promise to expose them with documentary proof at an appropriate time. If they did not at first take him seriously, they had to sit up and take notice when Raut came up with the names of people extorting money on behalf of the ED and sent the documents across to the prime minister.

Even if Modi does not act on it, it serves to discredit the central agency and, indeed, even the Modi government and the BJP, if they don’t act on it.

The MVA’s combined action is serving to reduce the central agency’s actions to a farce and weakening the case against NCP members. Sharad Pawar, who had first reduced the ED to a joke in 2019, is well aware why only his party members are on target and he is subtly making sure that the hands of the central agencies reach no further.

State BJP leaders are unequal to the task of combating this ‘United we stand, divided you fall’ strategy as there are already rumblings in the state BJP wondering if they might have gone one step too far and lost credibility with the masses.

Their excessive use of the central agencies has clearly boomeranged ahead of a series of municipal elections in Maharashtra, driving the MVA leaders into each others’ arms rather than further apart as usually happens before such polls.

The way the MVA is dealing with the issue could be subject matter for study by political scientists in the near future. In any case, it is setting an example to other non-BJP state governments on how to deal with the barn yard bullies at the Centre. And the more Fadnavis and his cohorts beat their arms and legs in frustration, the further it damages their image in the perception of the people.

The BJP in Maharashtra could have bitten off more than it could chew and the MVA is clearly now poised to eating them up whole.

(The writer is Consulting Editor, National Herald, Mumbai. Views are personal)