Maharashtra crisis: India’s richest state falls into chaos as chief minister resigns

The chief minister of India’s richest state, Maharashtra, has resigned after days of uncertainty as rebels of his party aim to revive the party’s Hindu nationalistic politics.

Uddhav Thackeray, who headed the complicated tri-party coalition government in Maharashtra, announced his resignation on Wednesday in an online address, saying “democracy must be followed” in the country.

The move comes after the top court of the country gave green light to a floor test in the Assembly, where the embattled chief minister would have had to prove his majority.

Mr Thackeray seemed to have pre-empted the outcome and chose to resign instead as a group of lawmakers from his party, led by senior minister Eknath Shinde, have been in open rebellion for weeks now.

The fall of Mr Thackeray’s government, which was widely praised across India for handling the Covid-19 pandemic well, has been yet another example of the toppling of parties not aligned with Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party.

The Shiv Sena – a party founded by Mr Thackeray’s father and Hindu nationalist leader Bal Thackeray – was a long-term ally of the BJP. It established its politics with a stand against migrant workers, demanding preferential treatment for the native Marathi people.

But over the last few years, following the death of the senior Thackeray, the party grew distant from the BJP, which took a hardline Hindu nationalist route with Mr Modi at the forefront.

In the 2019 state elections, the Shiv Sena partnered with centrist parties and thwarted BJP’s majority, forming a tri-party coalition with Mr Thackeray as the chief minister.

Emerging as one of the most vocal critics of the BJP and its Hindu nationalist agenda, Mr Thackeray created an image of a chief minister focused on governance by increasingly engaging with the media and citizens directly on social media networks and rejecting the hate politics dominating the country under Mr Modi, where Muslim minorities are increasingly becoming a target.

His government also introduced an ambitious net-zero plan for Mumbai, India’s financial hub and Maharashtra’s capital, making it the first South Asian city to have a carbon neutrality goal.

The BJP has repeatedly questioned Shiv Sena’s faith in Hindu nationalism and the recent internal rebellion is believed to be largely stirred by BJP’s backing.

Senior Shiv Sena leaders have also blamed the BJP for the revolt, accusing it of trying to topple the coalition government. The rebel Shiv Sena members have been isolated from the main party and have been staying in hotels in two BJP-ruled states, a tactic that has often been adopted by the BJP before governments are toppled.

However, the BJP leaders have denied this, saying the crisis was Shiv Sena’s “internal matter”.

The rebel members led by Mr Shinde claim the “real Shiv Sena” is represented by the group now, which is far larger in size than the group supporting Mr Thackeray. They are pressing for the revival of their alliance with the BJP and to bring Shiv Sena back to its Hindu nationalist stand.