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- Abhay Kumar Dubey’s Column Coalition Governments Have Been Faltering Despite Having A Majority
10 hours ago
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Abhay Kumar Dubey, Professor at Ambedkar University, Delhi
In coalition politics, the government does not remain stable only on the strength of numbers. The coordination of alliance partners, the ambitions of their leaders and the ups and downs of strategies related to political gains and losses decide whether the government will last long or not.
It has happened many times that an alliance wins a landslide victory in the elections, but the sword of instability hangs over its government. The Grand Alliance government formed in Bihar in 2015 is the most effective example of this.
This alliance of Lalu, Nitish, Congress and Left had reduced BJP to only 53 seats. But as soon as the government was formed, there were two centers of power in it. As Deputy Chief Minister, Tejashwi Yadav started holding meetings of his MLAs separately.
A series of orders contradicting each other started from him and the Chief Minister. The loyalties of the bureaucracy also got shaken. Within no time, Nitish returned to NDA and despite having a strong majority, the experiment of Grand Alliance flopped miserably.
In the nineties, BJP made three experiments in UP politics to form a coalition government with Mayawati, but each time the life of the government turned out to be very short. All these governments did not fall due to the pressure of opposition politics. His own contradictions weighed heavily on him.
The question here is whether these apprehensions of Bihar and UP apply to the grand alliance government formed in Maharashtra or not? Will the extraordinary majority achieved by the landslide victory in the elections be sustained despite the open and hidden intentions of the alliance partners?
Remember, what Devendra Fadnavis had said after being elected leader of the BJP legislature party? His words were, ‘The post of Chief Minister is a technical arrangement. The three of us will run the government together. Generally, whatever the government may be, the Chief Minister runs the government in consultation with his ministers. But the ministers neither share in his ‘authority’, nor are their ‘authority’ and that of the Chief Minister equal.
Does Fadnavis’s statement here not mean that the Chief Minister and the two Deputy Chief Ministers will have equal powers? If this is the situation then there will be three centers of power in this government. The uniqueness of the political situation of Maharashtra does not end here.
Since Eknath Shinde was not ready to take up the post of Deputy Chief Minister, Fadnavis had to assure him that his influence in the government would remain the same as he had as Chief Minister. If this is true, then Ajit Pawar’s center being the weakest among the three centers of power, will remain under Fadnavis. But Shinde’s center will assume the status of parallel center of power due to his two and a half year chief ministership.
If BJP wanted, it could have formed a majority government even without Shinde, only with the help of Pawar. That government could have been stronger. In that, the challenge to Fadnavis’s ‘authority’ would have been minimal. But despite its best performance in the elections, the BJP still finds itself a step behind in establishing its sole dominance in Maharashtra politics.
Its objective of dividing Shiv Sena has not been achieved 100 percent yet. Uddhav’s performance was very poor, but despite this he won 10 out of 20 seats in Mumbai. That is, BJP is not confident of snatching the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation from Uddhav Thackeray without Shinde’s help.
Secondly, 124 Maratha MLAs have been elected in the assembly of 288. When the Maratha reservation movement was at its peak, it used to target BJP and Fadnavis. His attitude towards Shinde was soft.
After the defeat of Sharad Pawar in the elections, Shinde is being considered as the new leader of the Maratha community from Maharashtra. In the eyes of the community, Ajit Pawar is not fit to fill the place vacated by his uncle. This is a big socio-political reason, due to which it was necessary to include Shinde in the government.
Fadnavis’s previous tenure shows that he likes to enjoy 100 per cent of his ‘authority’. But this time they will have to show a lot of flexibility. Many times they will have to accept things which they would not have accepted otherwise. (These are the author’s own views)
