THE LONELINESS OF EKNATH SHINDE

He is given name means 'the one and only Lord'. The irony must be biting by now. In June 2022, Eknath Shinde did the unthinkable by splitting the Shiv Sena and toppling the Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi (MVA) regime led by his then party boss Uddhav Thackeray.

- Dhaval Kulkarni

Then, in one of the more striking instances of India offering validation for Otto von Bismarck's axiom about politics being the art of the possible, Shinde was propped up as the chief minister of Maharashtra by the BJP with Devendra Fadnavis-in whose cabinet he was a minister during 2014-19-as his deputy. This was despite the BJP having more than twice the number of MLAs (106) than Shinde's (40). Shinde later walked away with his parent party's name and election symbol, cementing his claim that his faction represented the 'real' Shiv Sena.

One year on, the same Eknath Shinde seems besieged. The BJP decided it was time for an encore, and went on to split the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) this time and rope in the breakaway faction led by leader of the Opposition Ajit Pawar. This was, in a case of perception becoming reality, a vote of no-confidence in Shinde's leadership and his ability to deliver Maharashtra for the NDA in the 2024 Lok Sabha and state assembly elections. Both perception and reality deepened when, on July 2, Ajit Pawar joined the ShindeFadnavis government as a deputy CM with eight other rebel NCP colleagues.

Last year, Shinde and his loyalists had blamed their own revolt from the MVA on the domineering presence of the same man who has joined then now. They had charged Ajit Pawar, then deputy CM and finance minister in the Uddhav regime, with favouring NCP ministers and legislators in fund allocation at the cost of their Sena counterparts. With Uddhav being a hands-off CM, it was Ajit Pawar who was seen as driving the government.