The Fall and Rise of Devendra Fadnavis

The path is clear for him to be the next chief minister of Maharashtra, again.

Fadnavis meeting Sitharaman.

(Photo: X)

After all the ridicule and the controversies, Devendra Fadnavis has finally arrived, again.

The 54-year-old has emerged as the tallest leader of the BJP in Maharashtra, surpassing even Nitin Gadkari, as the highest decision-making body of the party endorsed his candidature for the CM post on 4 December.

Like it or not, Fadnavis, who was forced to serve as deputy CM some three years back after being the CM for a full term, has sprung a surprise on his supporters and detractors alike with the Mahayuti's landslide victory in the Assembly polls.

It is said that patience is not simply the ability to wait—it's how we behave while we’re waiting. Fadnavis might be the perfect example of this.

The punchline of his 2019 Assembly election campaign, for which he became the butt of jokes, was mee punha yein (I will return). He became the CM for three days with Ajit Pawar as his deputy, but the experiment turned out to be laughable.

Gone are those days.

Fadnavis is a popular and acceptable face of the BJP across Maharashtra, despite being a Brahman and a hardline RSS karyakarta.

Before Fadnavis, the late Gopinath Munde was the mass leader and OBC face of the BJP. The late Pramod Mahajan was another stalwart of the party from Maharashtra who was even seen as prime minister material, liked by both Marxists to Mandalites.

But Fadnavis is a different politician altogether compared to Munde, Mahajan, and his one-time mentor Nitin Gadkari, who brought him into politics. He is now credited with demolishing the Congress party, Uddhav Thackeray's Shiv Sena, and Sharad Pawar’s NCP in less than six months after the Lok Sabha debacle, in which the BJP and its allies suffered quite some losses.

This is not to say that he is without his fair share of controversy, like his now infamous "vote jihad" remark during a campaign rally. Nevertheless, how much he is able to keep his party's star on the ascendant is for everyone to see, as the badly mauled Opposition continues to claim that the election was not fair.

The backing by Modi, through thick and thin, has aided the rise of Fadnavi, whose success may have brought him into the same category as top BJP leaders like Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, and Shivraj Singh Chouhan.

He has had the confidence of the BJP high command since 2014 without a break. His effort to grant reservations to the Marathas was dubbed as a “surgical strike” on the quota issue by his supporters. It could not stand scrutiny in the Supreme Court eventually.

Fadnavis was the favourite punching bag of Maratha reservation movement leader Manoj Jarange Patil during the Lok Sabha elections, who was seen as the kingmaker maker at the time.

But Patil became passive and is now being challenged by the OBCs in the state. The assembly election has not only decimated the opposition parties but also changed the games of power and the grammar of politics in middle-class Maharashtra.

Regional parties, which have been controlling power since 1995, are not in a dictating position after the splits in the Shiv Sena and the NCP. For the BJP, Fadnavis is the best bet in Maharashtra, which is also the belated realisation of a section of the high command acting against his interests.

The success is as much a challenge to Fadnavis as an opportunity. Fadnavis had a carte blanche in running Maharashtra, but at the same time he did not give any opportunity to Eknath Shinde or Ajit Pawar to complain about him, thereby projecting that the trio has quite the working relationship.

It does not happen so easily in politics. The opposition MVA is the perfect example of the lack of political savvy, as seen during the Assembly polls. Detractors of the BJP-led Mahayuti are such an emasculated lot that they cannot even have a recognised Leader of the Opposition. In comparison, Fadnavis was a balanced leader who mastered the art of patience.

The proof of the pudding is in the eating. How Fadnavis leads as CM of India’s wealthiest state, which faces a variety of problems ranging from agrarian distress, unemployment, and urban neglect, will determine the future of many political actors in Maharashtra.

But for now, Fadnavis can soak in the glory, fulfilling his promise of mee punha yein.

(Sunil Gatade is a former Associate Editor of the Press Trust of India. Venkatesh Kesari is an independent journalist. This is an opinion article and the views expressed are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)