Only about a week ago, there were strong reactions to Sharad Pawar's guileful snatching of power in Maharashtra after a big political farce had been successfully performed by Ajit Pawar to create a make-believe situation of rift between the uncle-nephew duo. Most political analysts have expressed only one opinion: The senior Pawar couldn’t have achieved his goal without machinations of the highest order. As insiders suspect, he tutored Ajit, his elder brother’s son treated dearly as pampered son (he has only daughters) with such tricks as no ordinary soul would ever suspect the deadly blow coming the BJP's way. Ajit, pretending to be a breakaway from the NCP fold, embraced the BJP biggies when the saffron ‘think tank' was in a distressed state with no solution in hand. Ajit tricked the overconfident Amit Shah into believing that he would care for none of made Deputy Chief Minister. Shah trusted him wholly. They formed a Government at dawn when the world around had not even woken up to make sense. Foolish saffron loudmouths revelled the ‘victory'! Little could anyone suspect that the whole move was to turn the BJP complacent thereby weakening it beyond limits. The servile Governor was told to do a madly hurried job which would naturally have many flaws to be legally untenable. Pawar created a perfect opportunity to move the Supreme Court, which took instant cognisance of the of the Governor’s stupidest act of granting the ‘Fadnavis Government' a long time to prove majority on the floor. The idea was obviously meant to facilitate horse-trading. Ajit's duping act yielded the best results, especially as he had co-actors masquerading as NCP dissidents following him blindly. The apex court ruled against the BJP blunder and Pawar was back in power.
The people in Maharashtra had certainly not voted for Pawar or his close allies. They had given the mandate to the BJP-Shiv Sena combine. By all parameters, Pawar was conclusively rejected by the voters. It is obvious that Uddhav Thackeray's big dream of occupying the Chief Minister's seat once in lifetime has come true which his illustrious father Bal Thackeray who founded the Shiv Sena never achieved. Pawar took advantage of Udhab's flaw and dealt the blow without error. Maharashtra's political future looks rather bleak for the way the new Government has been formed.
All the same, there is a bright silver line: the Sena-NCP mix is a horrendously crazy outfit. The BJP, with its huge number of MLAs in Opposyion, is sure to keep the Government under enormous control. Uddhav may have terribly nightmarish times ahead for having blindly trusted the Pawars who can stab from behind at any moment they feel threatened or overtaken.