Maharashtra crisis: A look at past political power shifts in governments

Maharashtra is witnessing a major political crisis as the ruling party scrambles to maintain its numbers in the legislative assembly

The recently concluded Maharashtra Legislative Council elections saw the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) trump its rivals by winning five of the ten seats that went to polls. The Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and Shiv Sena won two each while Congress settled for one.

Maharashtra CM broke his silence on the coup by his top minister. (Satyabrata Tripathy/HT Photo)

Ever since the results were announced, there has been a political turmoil between the current Shiv Sena government and BJP aspirants.

The latter aims to wrest power resulting in a rebellion group forming within the Shiv Sena, led by development minister Eknath Shinde.

In this battle, the saffron party has 106 lawmakers in the 288-member House while its allies have eight. With 114 lawmakers, BJP and its allies are 30 short of the halfway mark of 144, however, they are expecting the support of small parties to win over Maharashtra.

Let’s take a look at some of the most dramatic shifts in governments in recent history:

- After the Congress-Janata Dal (Secular) (JDS) coalition in Karnataka collapsed in July 2019, Congress accused BJP of carrying out “one of the most heinous” horse-trading the nation had seen. 12 MLAs from the ruling coalition handed their resignations to the assembly speaker resulting in weakening of the grand old party.

- In March 2020, a little less than a year before the collapse of the coalition government in Karnataka, BJP successfully took over the Madhya Pradesh government resulting in the then Chief Minister Kamal Nath resigning. After 15 months of assuming office, 22 state legislators from Nath’s government rebelled against him which triggered Congress’ senior leader Jyotiraditya Scindia to quit the party and join BJP.

- In 2021, BJP managed to snatch the Congress-led government in the Union Territory of Puducherry where the saffron party did not have a single MLA. In the Assembly polls, they then won six of the nine seats that they contested. Then Congress leader and PWD minister A Namassivayam quit the party and pledged allegiance to BJP which resulted in Congress legislators quitting and joining the ruling party. As per media reports, BJP last had representation in the Assembly in the 1990s.

- In 2017, BJP took over Arunachal Pradesh when 33 out of the 43 People’s Party of Arunachal (PPA) MLAs led by then CM Pema Khandu joined the saffron party. Prior to joining the PPA, Khandu was with the Congress.

What’s happening in Maharashtra?

Shinde, who is in Assam now, after a brief stay in Gujarat, on Wednesday night, said Sena was not benefiting from the alliance with other parties in Maharashtra.

On the other hand, Maharashtra chief minister Uddhav Thackeray broke his silence on the coup by his top minister offering to resign if any of his rebel MLAs come to him and say they don’t want him as the chief minister.

His address evoked a rousing response from his supporters who had gathered in large numbers outside his official residence when he left for the family home - “Matoshree” - along with wife Rashmi and son Aaditya Thackeray.

Meanwhile, Shinde had said that he has over 40 MLAs with him. One MLA, Nitin Deshmukh, however, returned to Mumbai.