Maharashtra Crisis: Shinde – Fadnavis Secret Meeting in Vadodara for Next Government
Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, June 25: The BJP is learnt to be preparing to join hands with the Shiv Sena splinter group led by Eknath Shinde to form a government in Maharashtra after toppling the three-party Mava Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government currently headed by the Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray.
Sources close to the Sena rebel camp in Guwahati indicated that a secret meeting took place between Shinde and the former Maharashtra BJP chief minister Devendra Fadnavis in the Gujarat city of Vadodara on Friday night in which the union home minister Amit Shah was also present.
The details of what transpired at the meeting was not known but it is learnt that the three met in Vadodara at the dead of the night around 2 A.M. and it lasted for about two hours.
The composition of the proposed ministry is not immediately known. The Shinde camp which has insisted to keep the “Shiv Sena tag” and name its group as “Shiv Sena Balasaheb” after the Sena founder and ideologue Bal Thackeray, who is also the father of Uddhav Thackeray, may be given support by the BJP from outside to form the ministry or the two parties jointly form the government. After putting their political career at risk by revolting against Balasaheb’s son, it is highly unlikely that Shinde group would play the second fiddle with Fadnavis as the chief minister.
Sources said both Fadnavis and Shinde had left for Vadodara by chartered planes around midnight, Fadnavis from Mumbai and Shinde from Guwahati where the reel group is camping, while Shah was already in Vadodara. However, it is difficult to say whether Amit Shah was also involved in this meeting or not? Sources said after this development came to the fore, the BJP has intensified preparations to form the government with the Shinde faction in Maharashtra.
On the other hand, Shiv Sena has also made preparations to take action on Shinde faction. The deputy speaker accepted Shiv Sena’s request to cancel the membership of 16 rebel MLAs, including Shinde, and issued a notice to the Shinde faction, giving them time till Monday to file a reply.
Sources said Shinde and the rebels want to ally with their former partner, BJP, again and claim they have the numbers to form government. But the MVA alliance of the Sena, Nationalist Congress Party and the Congress have told the rebels to return for a floor test.
The Sena’s play appears to be to go for disqualifying the 16 rebels and discouraging the rest from facing elections, hence forcing them to return from Assam, where the BJP’s north-east election strategist Himanta Biswa Sarma is the Chief Minister and whose close aides have been taking care of logistics in the hotel where the MLAs are staying.
