NEW DELHI: The BJP may have lost face in the game of thrones in Maharashtra but the party leadership appears to be of the view that it couldn’t have been a mere bystander even as the Congress, the NCP and the Shiv Sena steal their thunder.
“The BJP chief takes politics as a game and he doesn’t like being a bystander. He relentlessly pursues political possibilities to push the limits for the BJP. The BJP being the largest party in the state and also enjoying the popular mandate on the basis of the pre-poll alliance was within its rights to explore alternative alliances. There’s indeed a setback, but in the game of politics one cannot be a winner all the times,” a source close to Amit Shah said.
The BJP was upbeat about the Devendra Fadnavis-Ajit Pawar partnership surviving the test of the Assembly until Monday.
But the Supreme Court order telling Fadnavis to prove his majority on the floor of the House on Wednesday forced the BJP to ask him to resign as CM.
The mandated time to pass the floor test by Wednesday was apparently too short a time for the BJP to cobble up the required numbers in the face of the NCP “rebel” Ajit Pawar not scripting major defections from his outfit.
By Tuesday afternoon, Shah realised the scales favoured his political foes, and instructions were sent to Fadnavis to put in his papers.
“The evident setback in Shah’s political games isn’t new, for there had been similar reverses in Karnataka and Uttarakhand previously.But the BJP chief eventually came triumphant, though the process took longer,” said a senior BJP functionary.
BJP sources claimed there are still some plots yet to unfold in the Maharashtra thriller.
“The Maharashtra politics is now a matter of ego for the BJP brass, with the likelihood of Uddhav Thackeray becoming CM. There are obvious faultlines in the Sena-NCP-Congress alliance, and the BJP wouldn’t hesitate to exploit them,” he added.