The election of the 44-year-old Devendra Fadnavis is a turning point for Maharashtra politics which has so far been dominated by sugar barons (as their power sprang from the ownership of cooperative sugar factories and other allied industries) from the dominant Maratha caste, and primarily from the Congress party. In Mr Fadnavis, it is the first time that the state has a BJP chief minister since its formation in 1960.
It is politically declasse to talk of caste in the Narendra Modi era of development, but the fact is that the state, because of its legacy of strong social reformers and saints, had a strong anti-Brahmin movement. It was for the first time that the Shiv Sena’s Bal Thackeray installed a Brahmin Chief Minister in the late Nineties, namely Manohar Joshi, when it ruled in alliance with the BJP.
But this was more because Mr Joshi was the most competent leader the Sena had. In the case of the BJP, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh was determined to break this anti-brahmin taboo when it groomed Nitin Gadkari as a BJP leader. There was no love lost between Mr Modi and Mr Gadkari, who had prime ministerial ambitions, and the latter’s problems with the income-tax authorities gave Mr Modi the upper hand. Though Mr Modi gave him an important portfolio at the Centre, Mr Gadkari is not part of the politically privileged Raisina Hills club.
Mr Gadkari was reckless enough to show his strength when he got the majority of MLAs from Vidarbha to campaign for him to be appointed Chief Minister even though he knew the winds were blowing heavily in favour of Mr Fadnavis, his rival in Nagpur. He had always kept Mr Fadnavis at bay and saw to it that he was not given a ministerial position during the only time that the Shiv Sena-BJP ruled the state.
Mr Fadnavis, a law graduate with a post-graduate degree in business management and a clean, untainted image, is a novice to the pulls and pushes of administration. But he has the support of Prime Minister Modi and BJP president Amit Shah, not to mention the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. His major challenges will be to tackle the irrigation and other scams, primarily by Nationalist Congress Party leaders, and temper the hold of the builders’ lobby in the state.
He will also have to balance his equations with rival Nitin Gadkari, the Shiv Sena and the sugar barons.
Once an ardent protagonist of a separate Vidarbha state, the affable Mr Fadnavis had recently toned down his position. It is significant that after decades a Chief Minister has emerged from Vidarbha.
Mr Fadnavis is the fourth Chief Minister from the region, the last being Sudhakarrao Naik in the early Nineties, a suitable reward for Vidarbha as it provided one-third of the 122 seats that the BJP won in Maharashtra.
