BJP plan: Talk less, strategize more, says Girish Mahajan

MUMBAI: BJP MLA Girish Mahajan was stating the obvious when he said on Monday night, as the BJP won five MLC seats in Maharashtra, that leaders of his party talk less and strategise more and hence it wins. After winning the five legislative council seats, opposition leader and ex-CM Devendra Fadnavis also declared outside the BJP state party headquarters that it was late (11.30 pm) and that the party would have a celebration on Tuesday morning.
There was no celebration on Tuesday morning, which BJP watchers say was clearly an indication that the party was already aware of what was coming.

Throughout the day, BJP leaders also spoke of the internal contradictions in the Maha Vikas Aghadi that had led to Eknath Shinde’s rebellion, while strenuously asserting it had nothing to do with a revolt within the Sena. Yet Shinde and his supporting MLAs’ quiet march to neighbouring Gujarat, a place where BJP is in power, and his invoking of Hindutva was seen as an embrace of, and with the BJP, not without the BJP’s sanction.
Prasad Lad, who was BJP’s fifth candidate in the MLC polls and won 28 votes, had warned the Shiv Sena immediately after his victory that 12 of their MLAs had cross-voted – which again in retrospect was seen as a clear indication he had given of things to come.
Sources said BJP’s objective in giving a thumbs up to Shinde’s rebellion has not been merely to win the recent Rajya Sabha and the legislative council elections, but the party has set its eyes on the BMC, the country’s richest civic corporation and the Shiv Sena’s fiefdom for nearly a quarter of a century. The civic elections are due in a few months.
The timing of Shinde’s rebellion is with an eye on the civic elections and comes after CM Uddhav Thackeray’s rant that the BJP “wanted it all” and his question on “whether Sena was merely there to clean clothes and utensils.”
BJP sources, explaining the choice of Fadnavis to take the lead in the RS and MLC elections and to direct strategy and the timing, said, “The party has several political and economic power centres, and there are lots of pulls and pressures, Mumbai being the country’s commercial capital. A group within the party tried hard to sideline Fadnavis and project someone else. But Fadnavis they all had to turn to eventually,” sources said.
It was then that the party central leadership stepped in and brought back Fadnavis, who for nearly a year was not exactly on top of things.
Sources said, “ Fadnavis refused to be drawn into personalised politics. His own commitment, background, and image of being a clean leader helped him. There is a slight parallel between him and Pushkar Dhami of Uttarakhand. Dhami has a clean image, and there is a strong faction that played a role in Dhami’s defeat in the assembly election there. Again, the Centre decided we cannot lose him. The party was voted to power and made him CM. Fadnavis has proved the Centre right and has played his cards well.”