Eknath Shinde’s One-Upmanship Upsets BJP’s Top Brass?

The game of one-upmanship between Shiv Sena’s Eknath Shinde and Maharashtra’s chief minister Devendra Fadnavis, that followed in the relief operations for the tourists affected by the Pahalgam terrorist attack, exposed the friction within Mahayuti government. Shinde duplicated the efforts of the Fadnavis government with his parallel visits and relief flights for the stranded tourists there. While Shinde was meeting tourists at Pahalgam, donating to the local Muslim victim and even holding parleys with Jammu and Kashmir’s deputy chief minister, Fadnavis was restricted to paying condolence visits to Pahalgam victim families at Pune. This wasn’t Shinde’s first attempt at duplication of governance; earlier too he had set up parallel medical relief funds in tandem with Fadnavis’ official ones. Shinde may have been cornered within Mahayuti with many of his decisions as CM either being withdrawn, stayed, kept in abeyance or simply rejected but he is not lying quiet and instead seizing the moment like he did at Pahalgam. He is also trying to assert himself as a Hindutva mascot and trying to usurp the advantage enjoyed by the Thackeray cousins even if they were to come together. Shinde’s attempt to carve out his own distinct identity in Fadnavis’ term, is clearly not going down with the man and the party at the helm. The BJP is clearly upset with Shinde’s attempt to hog the credit and not let the landslide majority government have its way. Shinde may be indispensable to the BJP in the run-up to the BMC polls to woo the Marathi manoos vote bank but remains to be seen how this open friction between Shinde and Fadnavis may play out for the Mahayuti in the forthcoming local elections.