When Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis met Union Home Minister Amit Shah in New Delhi early this week, the agenda was very clear. It was a discussion about the upcoming civic polls in Mumbai, Thane, Navi Mumbai and Pune and also about how to handle the open and extreme in-fighting between two of his alliance partners, Deputy CM Eknath Shinde and Deputy CM State Finance Minister Ajit Pawar. Just last weekend, one of Eknath Shinde’s trusted deputies and ministers who holds the ‘social justice’ portfolio, Sanjay Shirsat, openly said in the media that he was so frustrated with the lack of funds being allocated to his ministry by FM Ajit Pawar that he felt like telling the CM to shut down the Social Welfare ministry! Such comments by a deputy of the former CM, who just six months ago seemed so much firmer in the saddle as far as all the controls of state government were concerned, created waves at Mantralaya, and it became very obvious that there were sharp differences between Ajit Pawar’s NCP and Eknath Shinde’s Shiv Sena.
It has now transpired that the much-publicised Direct Benefit Transfer or DBT schemes, such as Mukhyamantri Ladki Bahin Yojana and Shetkari Sanman Yojana, announced by the state government just ahead of the last assembly elections in the state, were funded mainly by diverting funds from ministries such as Social Welfare and Tribal Development. It was announced by FM Ajit Pawar earlier that just the Ladki Bahin Yojana, under which Rs 1500 were to be paid per month to women from weaker economic sections of society, would put a burden of about Rs 44,000 crore on the state exchequer. There was no option before the state government other than diverting funds from some of the existing development and cash benefit transfer schemes of social welfare or tribal development ministries.
The Social Welfare ministry, headed by Sanjay Shirsat, has a whopping budget of about Rs 25,500 crore, while the Tribal Welfare ministry has a budget of over Rs 8,000 crore. These ministries run countless schemes providing benefits to the SC and ST sections of society and are directly dealing with many development schemes that run in rural Maharashtra. What has angered Eknath Shinde and his colleagues is the version presented by some of their ministers, who claim that funds for Direct Benefit Transfer Schemes were diverted from ministries held by Shinde’s Shiv Sena, while none of the ministries held by Ajit Pawar’s NCP had to face any cuts in their funds! Shinde’s colleagues claim that the Women and Child Welfare ministry held by NCP’s Aditi Tatkare did not face any cuts or diversion of funds on account of the DBT schemes, while ministers like Sanjay Shirsath are now left with virtually no funds for their schemes!
It is ironic that when Eknath Shinde walked out of the Maha Vikas Aghadi government, led by Uddhav Thackeray, in 2022 and joined the BJP-led Mahayuti alliance to form the new government in Maharashtra, the main complaint highlighted by most of his MLAs and some of his party colleagues was that Ajit Pawar, who was then the finance minister in the Maha Vikas Aghadi, was not allocating enough funds for his MLAs and was only focusing on NCP MLAs and its ministers. It seems like in three years Shinde and his team have travelled a full circle. Now the question being asked by political observers is: What options does Eknath Shinde have, and what will he exactly do to counter this new challenge posed by Ajit Pawar? Obviously, the difference between 2022 and now is that the powerful BJP, with over 100 MLAs in the state assembly, was in the opposition when Shinde walked out of Maha Vikas Aghadi. The BJP supported Shinde at every step and even went to the extent of making him the Chief Minister, though he had just 40 MLAs with him while the BJP had 105 MLAs. Now the BJP has 132 seats, and Shinde does not have much scope of walking out of the Mahayuti, as the BJP and Ajit Pawar, with his 41 MLAs, have a comfortable majority in the state assembly.
One version presented by some BJP insiders is that the party has decided that it will prepare to fight the next assembly elections of 2029 in Maharashtra as a solo player, without any alliance with Eknath Shinde’s Shiv Sena, and that is the reason they are slowly alienating Shinde. Informed sources say the party might even accept some alliance with Ajit Pawar’s NCP, as it mainly runs its politics in the “non-Hindutva space”, such as among minority communities, SC and ST voters, etc., where the BJP, in any case, does not have too much support. But Shinde is very much in the Hindutva space, and the BJP feels that a partner in that political space is a rival for the party. Financial crunch may be one reason why Mahayuti alliance partners are seen fighting with each other, but some observers claim a fight or some kind of split between them was expected in any case in the coming years.
Rohit Chandavarkar is a senior journalist who has worked for 31 years with various leading newspaper brands and television channels in Mumbai and Pune
