Devendra Fadnavis Wants To Quit As Deputy Chief Minister Over Maharashtra Result

Mumbai:

Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis has submitted his resignation. The BJP leader – who held the top post from 2014 to 2019, said, “I request my top bosses to relieve me from government responsibilities, and let me work for the party… from outside.”

The resignation comes after the BJP’s poor showing in the Maharashtra Lok Sabha election.

In 2019 the BJP – then with the undivided Sena led by Uddhav Thackeray – won 23 of 25 Lok Sabha seats it fought in Maharashtra. The Shiv Sena contested the other 23 and won 18.

Mr Fadnavis was then the Chief Minister.

This time the party – allied with the splinter units of the Sena and NCP that had helped Mr Fadnavis bring down the opposition alliance that succeeded him – won just nine seats.

Its allies – the rebel Sena group led by Eknath Shinde and his NCP counterpart Ajit Pawar, who were made chief minister and deputy – won eight of the 19 seats they fought.

By contrast, the formerly undivided NCP of Sharad Pawar and Mr Thackeray’s Sena – both rechristened after their main leaders after losing the party name and symbol to the breakaway factions – won eight of 12 and nine of 21 seats fought. 

The Congress won 13 of the 15 seats it contested. 

The party is the third member of the Maha Vikas Aghadi alliance formed after the 2019 state poll won by the BJP and undivided Sena, which broke over power-sharing talks.

The Sena-NCP-Congress’ haul of 30 of Maharashtra’s 48 seats helped the opposition INDIA bloc in slashing the BJP’s advantage from earlier national elections. The BJP – which claimed 282 seats in the 2014 election and 303 in the 2019 exercise – won just 240 this time.

The BJP’s poor showing in Uttar Pradesh (winning less than half its 80 seats after claiming 62 in 2019) and Bengal, where it was humbled by Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool, as well as an expected rout in Tamil Nadu, contributed to the poor result.

That 240 is 32 seats short of the majority mark, meaning Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party must now actively rely on NDA partners like Mr Shinde and Ajit Pawar’s parties.

Of course, losing Mr Shinde and Ajit Pawar’s 17 MPs will not immediately endanger the BJP government – as it would if Chandrababu Naidu’s TDP and Nitish Kumar’s JDU walk out – but it would make it harder for Mr Modi and the BJP to run a government. 

Maharashtra Assembly Election

Meanwhile, Mr Fadnavis’ resignation also comes months before Maharashtra’s next Assembly election. In the 2019 the BJP won 105 of the state’s 288 seats. 

The Sena got 56, the NCP 54, and the Congress 44; the latter was its best return since winning 82 seats in the 2009 election, when Ashok Chavan was at the helm.

Mr Chavan quit and joined the BJP this year and was made a Rajya Sabha MP.