Elections in a country are considered to play a major role in deciding the fate of a country. The people vote for the candidate or the political party they prefer and the winning party constitutes the government.
There used to be a time when there were a limited number of political parties and people had a clear understanding on whom to vote for. This led to a stable government. A stable government not only has time to enforce its policies efficiently, but also gives people the time to decide whether or not they are the right candidates to form the government.
However, due to the emergence of an unlimited number of political parties and independent candidates, there has been a rise in the number of unstable governments and confusion in the minds of the people as to who is the right candidate for running the government. There have been many instances, especially in the recent 2 or 3 years, where states in the country have seen a change in the government without them completing their term. Also, there are countries like Pakistan, which till date, have not seen a government completing their full term.
The state of Maharashtra has become a recent example of this “political change”, where the Maha-Vikas-Aghadi government was overthrown due to a rift in the Shivsena. Groupism among the Shivsena played the leading role in overthrowing the government, where the group led by Eknath Shinde formed an alliance with the BJP to form the government. The main purpose of Shivsena established by Balasaheb Thackeray in June 1966 was to protect and promote Hindutva and the anti-migrant movement.
Since then, this had been the main aim of the party, which had the backing of BJP when they previously formed a coalition government in Maharashtra. Now in the 2019 state elections, the Shivsena had broken their alliance with the BJP and formed the Maha-Vikas-Aghadi government in Maharashtra with NCP and the Congress. Now this move by Uddhav Thackeray led to allegations of nepotism, with him favouring his son for a post in the government. Mr. Thackeray had shown a clear diversion from his party’s main aim of protecting Hindutva by forming an alliance with parties who are liberal in nature and opposed Balasaheb’s ideology.
Now, this diversion from ideology was not in the whole party, there were still some members who upheld Balasaheb’s ideology and wanted to work for it, but due to the nature of the alliance, they couldn’t. So, Shinde decided to revive the main aim of his party, for which he was supported by many members of the party, resulting in the fall of the MVA government. Shinde, who wanted to uphold the original ideology of Shivsena, was supported in this cause by the BJP, where both agreed to form a coalition government in Maharashtra.
In a surprising move, Eknath Shinde was made the chief minister and Devendra Fadnavis was made the deputy CM of the state. This move came where everybody was expecting Mr. Fadnavis to be made the CM. This move also led to several implications.
A major implication was that is the BJP willing to do anything to get back into power? The simple answer to this is NO. There can be two major reasons for this. First, the BJP wants a strong coalition with the Shivsena, a staunch supporter of their ideology, which was not possible earlier as Mr, Thackeray had formed an alliance with NCP and the Congress. So Shinde came as both, a saviour for the ideology and for BJP who had the mandate in their favour but still couldn’t form the government because of nepotism in the Shivsena. The move by BJP can also be seen as one to weaken the NCP, which, under Sharad Pawar has a stronghold in Maharashtra’s politics. Thus, BJP hits two targets with one arrow.
This whole event also shows how the Congress is losing its significance in the country. For instance, Congress had its government in the states of Goa, Uttarakhand, Madhya Pradesh, etc. where it lost its government and is now struggling to get people to believe them with their policies.
To conclude, a party or a candidate should stay with their ideology, it shouldn’t matter whether they come into power or not, but compromising with ideology just for the sake of coming into power, has its consequences.
