Analysis | The return of Devendra Fadnavis

In the last session of the Maharashtra Assembly, just before the State election in 2019, Devendra Fadnavis had declared that he would be returning as Chief Minister of the State.

It was in the last session of the Maharashtra Assembly, just before the State election in 2019, that Devendra Fadnavis had declared that he would be returning as Chief Minister of the State. The phrase, in Marathi, Mee Punha Yeil (I will be back), was invoked after that as a rallying cry by Mr. Fadnavis’s supporters and in mockery by his detratcors after the BJP-Shiv Sena alliance broke up and the Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government was formed in 2019. As he prepares to be sworn in as Chief Minister again, the phrase has now acquired the patina of grit, craftiness and political theatre, in one fell swoop.

For Mr. Fadnavis, 51, the fall of the MVA government was not just a political project but more importantly a grudge match with the Shiv Sena and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP). Since that early morning hush-hush swearing-in on November 23, 2019, when the Shiv Sena had exited the alliance with the BJP and Mr. Fadnavis had managed to rope in a substantial chunk of NCP MLAs headed by Ajit Pawar to join a government to be headed by him, to all of it coming a cropper just 80 hours later with Mr. Pawar heading back to the parent body of the NCP, Mr. Fadnavis’s image had taken quite a knocking. The two and a half years it took for him to serve  payback for that public denouement has been quite a journey.

According to those close to Mr. Fadnavis, while he had always had a sound image with regard to organisation and administration, at least three instances showed that he was a quick study when it came to oppositional politics of the streets. These were — his fiery speech at at a large rally in Tardeo in 2019 in support of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, very uncharacteristic as far as his hitherto soft spoken image, his tour and organising relief work during the floods that hit the State in 2020, and the BJP managing to win the Pandharpur bypoll in 2021, a seat that the party had never managed to win so far. If this was the art of oppositional politics, the events that preceded the fall of the MVA, were the craft. It was Mr. Fadnavis’s precise calculations that led to the BJP winning the extra seats in the Rajya Sabha and the Legislative Council polls, in both situations weaning away independents who had earlier supported the MVA government.

He and Union Minister Narayan Rane and senior State BJP leader Girish Mahajan also kept a keen eye on inner party rumblings within the Shiv Sena. When Eknath Shinde felt left out of the Shiv Sena power hierarchy, Mr. Fadnavis was waiting in the wings with just the right combination of tea, sympathy and a private jet.

For Mr. Fadnavis this return will be the sweetest. For in 2014, he was the chosen Chief Minister, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi picking him for the position, an announcement made in the thick of campaigning during that poll. In 2022, Mr. Fadnavis engineered his own return, Mee Punha Yeil.