A sea of trouble for a CM

At least someone has had the courage to announce that a third wave of Covid-19 might be in the offing. Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader Rajesh Tope, Maharashtra health minister, has publicly asked the state to be ready for another round of death and sorrow between July and September. This time, hopefully, it will be better prepared to tackle the third round of the health emergency.

Although Maharashtra has not exactly covered itself in glory in its management of the pandemic, Mr Tope is proving to be an able lieutenant to Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray, unlike his party colleague Anil Deshmukh, arguably the only serving home minister of an Indian state to face charges of corruption and possibly money-laundering too. To lose a home minister in the midst of a pandemic is an unmitigated disaster. And Mr Thackeray has his hands full — managing the pandemic, the relationship between him and supporting but untrustworthy parties (without whom he will not have a government), and an assertive BJP-led opposition abetted by the Centre.

And he’s a first-time chief minister!

In the mid-1990s, when he entered politics, Uddhav Thackeray was a reluctant politician, spurred into taking a bigger role in the family business by his wife, Rashmi.

Today the retiring Uddhav is firmly in command of his party, the Shiv Sena’s apparatus. He has also become the first Thackeray to foray where none has ever gone before — in government, as chief minister of Maharashtra.

In the intervening period, he proved to be surefooted and calculating. He neutralised all future threats. Narayan Rane, the uncrowned king of the Konkan region in Maharashtra, was shown the door by the Shiv Sena. Cousin Raj had to float his own party to stay relevant in politics. Most important, he has settled the succession issue, which means that at least in the near future, in the Shiv Sena there will be no messy family wars of the kind seen in the Pawar family.

But in government, Uddhav has shown his vulnerability. If his partners in government consider him autocratic and inaccessible, his attitude has been: So be it. While the Congress is frank about the fact that he is not really listening to the party, the chief minister is conscious that he has a less than reliable ally in the NCP. It is no secret that even with ministers in the Maharashtra government, the NCP is not averse to meeting the arch rival BJP by night. The NCP’s calculations are clear. In Uddhav Thackeray, it has a chief minister who can be moulded and manipulated. Who knows what might happen if it is the BJP it elects to support?

Mr Thackeray is running a quiet feud with the Centre. He very nearly didn’t become a chief minister as the governor took his time to agree to his nomination to the upper house because elections were postponed in the midst of the pandemic. It took an intervention by Narendra Modi to coax the governor to enable the election. Mr Thackeray took his revenge by refusing permission to the governor to use the state government aircraft to travel to Uttarakhand and survey the damage caused by the landslide in Chamoli. And so it goes.

But while he might still have the support of his party and some allies, Mr Thackeray will have to face multiple governance challenges in the very near future. February next year will see the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) elections. The Shiv Sena has held the BMC for 30 years. In the 2017 polls, the Shiv Sena had bagged 86 seats of the 227, while the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won 82. The Congress and the NCP managed 30 and nine seats, respectively. Will the alliance partners of the government stay as an alliance for the BMC elections as well? That will be a major test of Mr Thackeray’s leadership.

In the state, the BJP is not exactly resting on its oars. Issues of internal leadership are being addressed. Vinod Tawde and Eknath Khadse, two of the biggest rivals of Devendra Fadnavis, are on the sidelines. Pankaja Munde has been assured of a place in national politics (that was a year ago). The fact is, the BJP is setting its own house in order slowly.

Uddhav Thackeray is navigating choppy waters. And while people might forgive his lapses as inexperience, second chances are rare if the lapse is misgovernance.