Two Khan superstars, Shah Rukh Khan and Salman Khan, sat in the audience alongside two other luminaries, Ranbir Kapoor and Ranveer Singh. Mukesh Ambani and other iconic business leaders were also present, yet the real stars were on stage at the power-packed swearing-in ceremony of Devendra Fadnavis as Maharashtra’s Chief Minister at the sprawling Azad Maidan in Mumbai.
The foreground of the ceremony showcased a politically resurgent BJP, which had brushed aside the setback of the June 4 verdict in a Modi government dependent on alliance support, buoyed by back-to-back victories in Haryana and Maharashtra.
Political mathematics is brutal and reliant solely on numbers. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his entire cabinet, flanked by allies Nitish Kumar, the Chief Minister of Bihar, and Nara Chandrababu Naidu, the Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, underscored the success of the BJP’s political project.
Fadnavis, now officially adopting the nomenclature “Devendra Saritha Gangadharrao Fadnavis” in honour of his mother, was upgraded from Deputy CM to CM amidst thunderous applause. Azad Maidan witnessed a generational shift and public acknowledgment of the BJP’s next-generation leaders, with the loudest cheers reserved for Yogi Adityanath, the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, who led the largest number of rallies in Maharashtra.
Maharashtra's political supremo
Himanta Biswa Sarma, the Chief Minister of Assam who defected from the Congress, also seemed to have been fully embraced by the Sangh Parivar. Despite leading a failed campaign in Jharkhand, Sarma’s contentious policies have found wide acceptance as a template for the BJP.
Thus, the ceremony marked the coming-of-age of three BJP stalwarts flanking Modi. As is customary in the unforgiving arena of Indian politics, the rise of Fadnavis in Maharashtra has dwarfed his rival Nitin Gadkari, who once occupied the same Sangh ideological space.
Gadkari has seen his stature diminish from being touted as a future Prime Minister to watching Fadnavis, another Nagpur Brahmin, ascend to the position of Maharashtra’s political supremo.
Similarly, Yogi Adityanath’s ascent has sealed the fate of several BJP leaders from Uttar Pradesh, including Varun Gandhi, who was not even given a ticket to contest the recent elections.
Azad Maidan also saw enthusiastic cheers for Eknath Shinde, the former Chief Minister who fractured the Shiv Sena to wrest power from Uddhav Thackeray. Shinde, now Fadnavis’s deputy, has captured Mumbai’s imagination with his rags-to-riches story, mirroring the ethos of the “city of dreams.”
The BJP now relies on Shinde to decimate Uddhav Thackeray in the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) elections, the richest municipal body in Asia. Thackeray faces an existential challenge as Shinde positions himself in the public’s mind as the rightful inheritor of Balasaheb Thackeray’s divisive legacy.
Testing allies' patience
To counter the label of a “Facebook leader,” which Shinde has carefully pinned on him, Uddhav must emerge from Matoshree and fight to retain Mumbai, his last stronghold.
The long-delayed BMC elections may well be Thackeray’s last chance to prove his mettle or risk fading into irrelevance like his cousin, Raj Thackeray. Meanwhile, Sharad Pawar, one of Indian politics’ shrewdest tacticians, must have experienced mixed emotions watching his nephew, Ajit Pawar, take the oath as Deputy Chief Minister.
Now to the broader implications for India’s fragmented opposition under the INDIA Alliance. Observers note that Pawar senior feels betrayed by Rahul Gandhi and the Congress party, who ignored his repeated advice to run a cohesive, coordinated campaign among the allies. Yet, Rahul Gandhi, the politician with the most to lose, appears unperturbed, seemingly unaffected by snatching defeat from the jaws of victory in Haryana.
The Congress party’s commitment to what seems like a slow, protracted political suicide—rather than putting in the hard work to reconnect with voters on the ground—is testing the patience of its allies.
Post every electoral loss, it resorts to blaming electronic voting machines, frustrating opposition leaders such as Pawar, Mamata Banerjee (Chief Minister of West Bengal), and Akhilesh Yadav (chief of the Samajwadi Party).
The future of the INDIA Alliance now appears as murky as Delhi’s Air Quality Index.
