Devendra Fadnavis
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Career
2014-19
Sep 22, 2019: The Times of India
Most rules of the political game in Maharashtra were upturned when a Brahmin from Vidarbha, Devendra Fadnavis, was anointed as chief minister by PM Modi and BJP president Amit Shah in 2014. Not only were caste equations overlooked in a state dominated by the Marathas and leaders of the community, which forms 30% of the state’s population, but also BJP heavyweights such as Nitin Gadkari, who is also from Vidarbha.
Fadnavis has since trumped all inhouse challenges to his leadership within the state, got along extremely well with Shiv Sena president Uddhav Thackeray despite the Sena’s repeated barbs at the BJP and at the same time blocked the Sena’s efforts to undermine the BJP.
Significantly, his systematic poaching of Maratha satraps from the Congress and the NCP has shown that he has been able to get the better of Maratha strongman Sharad Pawar and others who long dominated state politics by ending an unstated pact that saw the two sides leave each other’s turfs alone.
The CM’s focus on developing infrastructure, the Jalyukt Shivar scheme he has pushed to promote irrigation, and the farm loan waiver has paid some dividends, while he showed plenty of skill in handling the Maratha quota agitation despite being only the second Brahmin to occupy the top post (after Manohar Joshi of the Sena, who was CM from 1995 to early 1999 before Bal Thackeray replaced him with Narayan Rane).
Fadnavis honed his political skills in the past five years and has emerged as the BJP’s troubleshooter in Maharashtra, much in the mould of Pramod Mahajan and Gopinath Munde, the party bigwigs from the 1990s. Fadnavis’s shoot-straightfrom-the-hip style has helped rejuvenate the BJP, especially in Mumbai and the bustling Mumbai Metropolitan Region, where the Sena once ruled with an iron hand, bringing the BJP tally just one seat short of the Sena’s in the BMC in 2017. In the rural heartland where the BJP has a poor presence, Fadnavis not only cajoled and coerced the ageing Congress-NCP satraps into falling in line but led the BJP to victories in most of the civic and local body polls in the past five years.
Thus it is Fadnavis who will singlehandedly run the BJP machine for the assembly polls, with intra-party rivals such as Eknath Khadse marginalised after they were forced to quit following allegations of graft. However, much depends on whether Fadnavis can strike a fine caste balance while distributing party tickets.
The Sena has already responded favourably to his persuasive skills, and Uddhav Thackeray’s statements have indicated that the Sena is willing to accept a lesser share of seats.
Fadnavis’s task now would be to aim at a majority for the BJP itself.
2019-2024
Vaibhav Purandare, Dec 5, 2024: The Times of India
As the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh gets ready to enter its 100th year, it has got the kind of gift it could only have dreamed of: in the state of its birth, a dyed-in-the-shakha saffron swayamsevak as chief minister, with smackingly high numbers in the legislature to back him up. Devendra Fadnavis is a man with deep ideological moorings in the Sangh and serious political upbringing in the BJP, and as he gears up for his new innings as CM, he brings with him, in addition, the vastly educative experience of a real rollercoaster ride he’s had over the past five years. That has seen him go through many moods, moments, experiences: one of exhilaration when the BJP-Shiv Sena combine won 161 seats in the 2019 assembly polls fought under his leadership; one of downright dejection when Uddhav Thackeray walked out of the alliance and Fadnavis suddenly realised the limitations of BJP’s reduced tally of 105 (from the 122 it had in 2014), which had actually enabled Uddhav to jump ship; one of having to endure mocking references to his pre-2019 polls pronouncement of ‘Mee Punha Yein (I’ll be back),’ which the opposition—and even detractors within BJP—used to beat him with. Also of having to play second fiddle to Eknath Shinde despite BJP having greater numbers in mid-2022. And of being at the receiving end of personal attacks—over his weight (by Uddhav Thackeray), allusions to his caste background (by a rival), and direct, denunciatory talk by Maratha quota activist Manoj Jarange.
Through it all, Fadnavis kept his head down. For some time literally so, because, as leader of opposition, Shinde said he’d sneak out quietly in the dead of night to meet him as they plotted Operation Topple MVA together. For one and a half years, Fadnavis, along with Shinde, worked on Shiv Sena legislators to get them to switch over and ‘restore’ the popular mandate. In the non-nocturnal hours, he carried out his job equally effectively, mounting blistering attacks and pressure on the floor of the House as the Anil Deshmukh-Param Bir Singh and Sachin Waze-Antilia bomb scare controversies blew up. At the end of it and given his experience as CM between 2014 and 2019, his lawyerly skills and his talent for sifting through govt papers and analysing budget numbers, hope obviously would have risen of taking up the top job again. But not only did he not get it, he could also not stay out of govt, though he publicly stated he would, as he was given the role of Shinde’s deputy. And just when things stabilised for the Mahayuti with Ajit Pawar too coming in and the govt getting much-needed legal breathers, there emerged the Maratha quota campaign, with Fadnavis as one of its top targets, which cast a shadow over the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. The June 4 LS polls results came as a shock, and Fadnavis, accepting responsibility, offered to resign in order to concentrate on rebuilding efforts ahead of the crucial assembly polls. Instead, he was asked by the BJP’s central leadership to take charge of poll preparations while staying in govt.
The morale of the party cadre was down, and the opposition MVA was riding a high, hoping to replicate its success in the assembly polls. At this point, Fadnavis made an early intervention that turned out to be critical. He spent a lot of time telling BJP workers— publicly at meetings, in private and via media interactions—that the gap in vote share between MVA and Mahayuti was marginal, at less than 1%. MVA had got barely two lakh votes more than Mahayuti, he emphasised, so if Mahayuti could get 2 lakh more of its voters out during assembly polls, the results could well be reversed. He repeatedly highlighted what he termed the “fake narrative” of the ‘Constitution in danger’ that had worked so well for MVA in the LS polls. He reached out to the R S S to seek its help in countering MVA’s narrative on caste and community and in bringing about Hindu consolidation by highlighting the ‘Malegaon model’ which had robbed Mahayuti of so many Lok Sabha seats by mobilising Muslim voters. After carefully selecting candidates for the assembly polls, he burned the phone lines asking BJP’s rebels across the state to withdraw, assuring them he’d take care of their interests and asking them to reach out to him whenever they wanted to. And while not saying a word in response to Jarange’s fulminations against him, he came out with his own fulminations against ‘vote jihad’ and in favour of what he termed as ‘dharmayuddha,’ the term he used to describe the assembly polls in a bid to counter the minority mobilisation ploy used by the opposition just months earlier.
For the most part, though, he was a silent performer. He took things on the chin and demonstrated resilience. That resilience has brought him the desired reward. And for the R S S, that ‘one from the family (Parivar)’ feeling again.
