From one crisis to another, Maha Vikas Aghadi alliance is under pressure

Cobbled together after the Assembly elections in a set of circumstances unique to Maharashtra’s politics, the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government — comprising the Shiv Sena, Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), and the Congress — was seen as the textbook example of a disparate alliance. The MVA experiment, where three unlikely partners joined forces to keep the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) out of power, was claimed to have created a template for similar experiments in other states.

However, after a year-and-half in the saddle, the Uddhav Thackeray-led regime is performing a veritable balancing act. The lack of coordinated strategies, the weakening authority