By all accounts, the swearing-in of the new government in Maharashtra — only three men, to be precise — on Thursday evening at Mumbai’s historic Azad Maidan was a grand affair with collected crowds, coordinated colours, corporate czars, Bollywood stars besides the politicians of the ruling alliance Mahayuti. In attendance were eight union ministers, 12 chief ministers of BJP-governed states, and five chief ministers of its allies. There was more noise about the event than the unfolding of the event itself because, after 12 long days of negotiations between the allies – BJP, Shiv Sena and Nationalist Congress Party – only chief minister Devendra Fadnavis and his deputies Eknath Shinde and Ajit Pawar took the oath of office.
Conspicuous by their absence were opposition leaders of Maharashtra and the rest of India. Perhaps the invitations did not go out to opposition-governed chief ministers, but the leadership of the opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) was invited. Neither Sharad Pawar (NCP-SP) nor any of his deputies showed up, neither Uddhav Thackeray (SS-UBT) made an appearance nor did his son Aaditya, and none of the Congress party’s state leaders deem it fit to attend the oath-taking ceremony. The MVA seems to be still reeling from the electoral rout and may have decided to stay away from the event given its multiple complaints about corruption and malpractices in the electoral process itself, including compromised EVMs about which it officially approached the Election Commission of India. The MVA’s boycott of the event can be explained by this.
However, in staying away to send a political message about the integrity of the electoral process, the MVA has allowed itself to be accused of a democratic lapse. A functioning democratic structure, of which the swearing-in of a new government is an intrinsic part, requires the ruling and opposition parties to discharge their responsibilities in a mindful manner, in public interest. Their boycott implies that the opposition parties do not recognise the Fadnavis-led government or will not engage with it — which is a mockery of even the 46 seats that they have between the three parties. The norms and protocols in a democracy cannot be subject to the whims and hurts of political parties.
The numbers do not allow for a regular Leader of Opposition in the Maharashtra Assembly now, which is a new low for the state Assembly as well as its political contours. How the parties now conduct themselves in the House, how they raise issues that continue to be of relevance to citizens, and how they hold the Fadnavis-led government to account not once or twice but consistently over the next five years remains to be seen. And in between all this, how the opposition parties conduct themselves within the framework of democratic functioning is important too. The MVA leaders would have done well to attend the swearing-in but register a silent creative protest.
