It is the Devendra Fadnavis Show!
Many, including myself, were a bit shattered when Devendra Fadnavis became the Deputy Chief Minister. Commonly, no one ever thought a person of his calibre and in a position who single handedly managed this coup and got the MVA out of power would become DCM. To become CM for Fadnavis after the coup was very obvious, which didn’t happen. Then a lot of theories floated in the political market. Some said, Delhi no 1 and no 2, especially, Number 2 has a strong dislike for Fadnavis and hence the strings are getting pulled from there and hence it is categorised decision to cut size the ever growing Fadnavis, and that was why he was demoted! Some said Ashish Shelar was in the race of becoming the CM (later touting him as the Home Minister), while some said all anti-Fadnavis camps of the Maharashtra BJP have united and taken help of the Centre. Similar voices raised their ugly heads when in spite of CM Shinde making 4 rounds, Fadnavis making 3 and Girish Mahajan making 1 round of Delhi and yet not the list of Ministers and after the swearing in, later for the portfolios. But then 18 Ministers were sworn in and to everyone’s surprise Fadnavis walked out with the maximum number of portfolios reducing his next top 3 to mere ‘Formality Ministers’. Hell broke loose when Sanjay Rathod was made the Minister but as said in my Youtube program (Vikrant Joshi -Youtube) Rathod had begun blackmailing the Shinde/Fadnavis camp of leaving if he was not made a Minister. CM and DCM were ready to take this with a pinch of salt (Rathod as a Minister) but none of them ever wanted to give a ‘lifeline’ to either an Uddhav Thackeray or a Sharad Pawar, as had even 1 Rathod had gone, there were a lot of Shirsat’s and others who could have got motivated. To give you more information, the Centre was not even ready to make a few big names of the BJP, as Ministers, namely the next top 3 after Fadnavis. It was Fadnavis who has thrown his weight around and got them Ministerial berth else all 3 have failed miserably to make BJP big in their own constituencies. In fact in case of 2 senior BJP Ministers today, both of them are responsible for loss of 4 and 5 MLA’s respectively in their own districts, such was their performance since 2019 and one of them has left his core constituency and is winning on the mercy of hardcore Brahmin bastion -Pune! Their portfolio allocation is more than enough to understand their standing in the eyes of the Centre. Yes, Centre was involved this time as they didn’t want any further fiasco as the ‘early morning swearing-in Ajit Pawar’ episode. Ravindra Chavan’s Ministerial birth was a gift in spite of heavy backlash he faced from his own constituency. But to have 3 Cabinet Ministers + 2 Central Ministers from Aurangabad district was a bit too harsh on ever performing BJP districts of Buldhana, Washim , Yavatmal and Akola with no representations. All said and done, everything has happened with the help of Centre and yes only one man is behind this whole operation-Devendra Gangadharrao Fadnavis, yes, even to become the DCM was HIS LONE strategy!
Bureaucratic Reshuffle!
I must say since 2018 our Chief Minister’s office is blessed with an Ajoy/Ajay which is an Indian masculine given name originating in Sanskrit ajaya “unconquered”, “unsurpassed”, “invincible”. Really this name is creating an impact since the fag-end of the Fadnavis government from 2018 and it has remained unconquered in the Uddhav Thackeray government and now if one Ajoy has gone, it is another Ajay who controls most of the CMO. Love it or hate it, for your information he has managed to pull a few strings to let a couple of senior bureaucrats to breathe easy who were expected to be thrown to Andaman due to their corrupt image. By the way, two Commissioner’s one BMC Iqbal Singh Chahal and the other MMRDA Commissioner SVR Srinivas will be there on their chairs for the next 6 months at least as per latest grapevine. Nope, all those lobbying hard to become those Commissioners, sincere advice-change your Ajay! If you have observed, PMO has sent their two ‘observers’ in Madia at the CMO and Shrikar Pardeshi at the DCM office, believe me when I say everything is monitored by them. A good Facebook friend and husband to a very strict lady IAS officer is trying extremely hard right from Delhi to replace the current Chief Secretary Manukumar Srivastava. Facebook friend, he is doing a decent job yaa, Aapka time aayega! To conclude, as the monsoon session is from tomorrow few changes in the IAS and IPS will happen only after the 24th of this month. By the way a very big point to observe in all the changes made afresh –every bureaucratic change has a Shinde stamp and not a Fadnavis stamp. Again why this, let it remain a Mystery to be solved.
Chandrashekhar Bawankule and Ashish Shelar’s appointments.
The decision to make Ashish Shelar again the Mumbai BJP chief has two reasons. One, the BMC and secondly to solve the in-fighting of the Mumbai BJP MLA’s who have their own camps. In order to bring order in the house and keeping the BMC elections in mind, only one man, whom me and baba always refer to as Sharad Pawar of the BJP (in good sense), it had to be Ashish who has the right set of skill sets to win the BMC for the BJP. Caste equation gets solved, a Marathi face is given and Shelar being the senior most, all the in-fighting will stop. Everyone was surprised as it was the same Centre who denied ticket to Bawankule in 2019 and now he is made the State President. Why did it happen? As I said, this is Devendra Fadnavis 2.0 and he IS the blue eyed boy of the top 2 not from now, but since 2013.
Vikrant Hemant Joshi
