NEW DELHI, June 7: The union home minster Amit Shah is learnt to have advised the Maharashtra deputy chief minister Devendra Fadnavis against quitting the office and asked him to continue with his work in the government.
Mr Fadnavis had offered to resign if the party high command agreed accepting the responsibility for the BJP’s poor showing in the Lok Sabha elections in Maharashtra. Mr Fadnavis, a former chief minister, is part of the Maharashtra government with the Eknath Shinde faction of the Shiv Sena and the Ajit Pawar-led Nationalist Congress Party (NCP).
The undivided Shiv Sena and the BJP had won 41 of the state’s 48 between them in 2019, but the new coalition – called the Mahayuti in Maharashtra – managed to get only 17 seats this time conceding the remaining 31 to the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) coalition of the Congress, Shiv Sena (UBT) and NCP (Sharad Pawar).
Mr Fadnavis had offered to resign on Wednesday, a day after the counting of votes, and several BJP leaders have spoken to him since. After the NDA meeting earlier on Friday, the BJP leader sat down with fellow Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar and Chief Minister Eknath Shinde to discuss the coalition’s performance in the state. Sources said the subject of Mr Fadnavis’ resignation also came up.
The deputy chief minister then met Mr Shah at his residence where, sources said, the home minister asked him to continue working for the Maharashtra government and also prepare a plan for revitalising the BJP in the state. Assembly elections in Maharashtra are likely to be held around October this year.
“If you resign, it will affect the morale of BJP workers. So don’t resign now,” Mr Shah is reported to have told Mr Fadnavis. Mr Shah also told him that they would discuss the resignation in detail after the swearing-in of Narendra Modi as Prime Minister for the third time, which is scheduled to be held at 6 pm on Sunday. The BJP’s poor performance in the Maharashtra having the second highest number of Lok Sabha seats after Uttar Pradesh largely contributed in the party being stopped below the majority mark forcing the party to depend on its alliance partners to form a government.
(Manas Dasgupta)
