Opinion: Has It Turned Into Fadnavis vs Shinde Already? Telling Signs
The egg on the faces of Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde and his Deputy, Devendra Fadnavis, is worth ₹ 1.79 lakh crore. That is the cumulative value of the four deals that Maharashtra has lost to Gujarat, two of them since the Shinde-Fadnavis combo took charge of the state.
The losses: the Vedanta Foxconn chip-making project, a bulk drug-manufacturing project, a medical park and, as of this week, a Tata-Airbus plan that will manufacture military transport planes.
The timing is portentous. Gujarat is due to vote for its next government and the announcement of securing some of the biggest investments in the country will pump up the BJP's campaign to demolish Arvind Kejriwal in the Prime Minister's home state.
Maharashtra, meanwhile, has to lick its wounds. The three main opposition parties there - whose joint government was dismantled by Shinde and Fadnavis - say the couple must explain what allows them to sit by and watch as Mumbai comes within spitting distance of losing its status as the financial capital. Maharashtra is India's second-most industrialised state (behind Tamil Nadu). But it is Gujarat that really seems to be doing business.
Shinde and leaders from the BJP in Maharashtra are trying to placate those within their party as well as voters. But the Shinde-BJP government seems to be a little unsteady on its feet.
I spoke to several leaders from the Shiv Sena (the Uddhav Thackeray faction), the Shinde faction, the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), the BJP and the Congress for this column.
Including union ministers, BJP representatives have no difference with this opinion: "Gujarati favouritism at the cost of Maharashtra must stop or we will face a grave crisis of Maharashtrian anger, first in the long-delayed Mumbai civic polls and then in the 2024 Lok Sabha and assembly elections". Remember that Nitin Gadkari, Union Minister, had made a huge pitch for the Tata project to come to Nagpur, his constituency, after Vedanta Foxconn exited Maharashtra for Gujarat. Despite the Gadkari hard scrabble, which included letters to Tata Sons Chairperson N Chandrasekaran, the Gujarat election trumped the Nagpur pitch.
The anger within Team Thackeray is palpable. A close Thackeray aide said, "The BJP and its central leaders should thank their lucky stars that Uddhav-ji is mild (mannered); if Balasaheb had been here, he would have made sure that 'street strength' ensured that those favouring Gujarat could not stay in Mumbai."
Mild or not, Thackeray is capitalising on the narrative of Gujarat being the favourite of the centre at the expense of Maharashtra. A competitive sub-regional sentiment has always existed between the two states, and the Sena and the NCP, both parties that have positioned themselves as "Maratha sons of the soil", are now seeding the narrative of Maharashtra and the "manoos" being fooled.
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