As power has been lost and the three parties’ portion of the pie is getting less, the underlying divides within the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) alliance are now coming to light.
This is one of the causes of the open argument between the Congress and Shiv Sena about who should be the Leader of the Opposition in the Legislative Council. Nana Patole, the state director for the Congress, asserted that the Sena failed to take her concerns into account before publicising Ambadas Danve’s name. The Congress believed it had an equal claim to the LoP job in the Council to Sena given that Ajit Pawar of the NCP had claimed the position in the Assembly.
The Congress, for instance, had taken issue with the Shiv Sena’s Uddhav Thackeray and the NCP’s Ajit Pawar being featured with its legislative wing leader and former Revenue Minister Balasaheb Thorat in government commercials and posters. The distribution of portfolios, in the opinion of the Congress, was unfair.
When the Finance Ministry under Ajit Pawar was “putting difficulties in their ministries,” Congress ministers had gone to Delhi to meet with the party’s national leadership to express their displeasure.
There is a faction that believes Patole was the one to start things off. They use the month of January 2020 as an illustration, when Patole—then-Assembly Speaker—moved an emergency motion calling for an OBC census. The fact that the matter was not discussed surprised both CM Thackeray and Deputy CM Ajit Pawar. A Speaker moving such a resolution is likewise unusual. Pawar had already indicated his dissatisfaction with the failure to take allies seriously.
Leaders point out that disagreements like these are nothing new among the three odd allies that joined forces to form the MVA. The Congress worked nonstop for the entire two and a half years while the MVA was in power to avoid being eclipsed by the Sena and NCP, which had far more supporters (while the Sena had 56 MLAs when the MVA government was formed, the NCP had 54 and the Congress 44).
