Two years ago, it would have been impossible to believe that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) would be down in the dumps in Maharashtra. The ragtag Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA), an unlikely coalition of ideologically opposed parties, one of them the oldest ally of the BJP, was not expected to last beyond a few months. But now, the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and the Shiv Sena are proving to the BJP the truth of the old European adage, that when a friend turns a foe, you have nowhere to go because he knows all your secrets and vulnerabilities.
So, the BJP’s old tried-and-tested formula of throwing central agencies at political rivals and those they wish to cow down suddenly seems not to be working at all. The manner in which Maharashtra Minister Nawab Malik seems to have gone for the jugular of the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) chief, Sameer Wankhede, has a subtext – Sharad Pawar has made up his mind that there can be no friendship with the BJP after women in his family were raided by central agencies, and Malik, actually playing the role of a Home Minister, is tearing the reputation of the BJP to shreds by exposing the criminal nexuses of its leaders.