Who is the most powerful Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader in the state? If the question was asked soon after the end of Gopinath Munde-Pramod Mahajan era and before the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, the answer would be Nitin Gadkari.
But things changed with the emergence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the subsequent elevation of Devendra Fadnavis as chief minister. In the next couple of years, it became clear that Fadnavis was gaining strength and that the state BJP would have a bipolar leadership structure.
Now, with Wednesday’s developments, Gadkari’s influence could be on the decline while that of Fadnavis has definitely risen. He now controls the government and has the final say in the party’s decisions related to Maharashtra.
In a rejig of the party’s parliamentary board, the central BJP leadership dropped Gadkari and Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan from it. On the other hand, Fadnavis was brought on board the party’s central election committee along with a few other leaders. Both these panels are crucial to the party’s organisational set-up.
While the exercise is a setback to Gadkari, it is seen as a recognition of Fadnavis’s contribution to the BJP’s victory in Bihar and Goa (though the party recently lost Bihar after Nitish Kumar decided to snap ties with it).
In 2014, when the BJP formed the government in the state, there were half a dozen frontline leaders. Eight years later, the pecking order has changed.
Eknath Khadse, who was considered number two after Fadnavis, is out of the party. Pankaja Munde, daughter of late Gopinath Munde, lost the 2019 assembly elections and is not in a position of power. Vinod Tawde has shifted to national-level organisational matters of the party while Chandrakant Patil and Sudhir Mungantiwar have accepted Fadnavis’s leadership.
“It is a clear indication that Gadkari’s influence in Delhi is on the wane. Fadnavis will have a bigger role to play. This is in line with the strategy adopted across the states as the party wants to bring forth younger leaders,” a senior BJP leader, requesting anonymity, said.
“Besides, the party leadership was not happy with Gadkari’s public remarks on various issues. Recently he said that he was not happy with the ways adopted in politics of power. Though it was not against the party, it was not taken lightly in Delhi,” he added.
Now the question is if Gadkari would remain one of the most influential leaders in the state? Many in the party think that the union transport minister would be a face of the BJP in Maharashtra as he is a household name.
Though late Mahajan and late Munde are credited with widening the party’s base in Maharashtra, Gadkari’s contribution is significant too. In fact, it was Gadkari who promoted leaders like Khadse, Mungantiwar, Tawde and Fadnavis during his tenure as state president. He is also known for building infrastructure like the Mumbai-Pune expressway, a number of flyovers in Mumbai, and initiating work on the Bandra-Worli Sea Link.
Now, speculations are rife that the leaders close to Gadkari would be out of favour. Senior party leaders, however, say that veterans passing on the baton to the younger faces is an accepted practice in the BJP. Besides, Fadnavis who like Gadkari belongs to Nagpur, is unlikely to bypass those who matter for the party.
“In the last few years, several leaders close to Gadkari have also built bridges with Fadnavis. Besides, in our party, elective merit is as important as the allegiance to any leader,” a BJP minister, who shares cordial relations with Gadkari, said.
A classic case is of Chandrashekhar Bawankule. A close aide of Gadkari and an influential OBC leader from Nagpur, Bawankule was energy minister in the Fadnavis-led government. However, he was denied an assembly ticket in 2019. Bawankule, who was also on good terms with Fadnavis, was soon accommodated in the legislative council as the party realised that the decision to deny him a ticket did not go down well with a section of OBC voters. Last week, Bawankule, who has moved closer to Fadnavis since then, was appointed as the state BJP chief.
