By all accounts, the swearing-in of the brand new authorities in Maharashtra — solely three males, to be exact — on Thursday night at Mumbai’s historic Azad Maidan was a grand affair with collected crowds, coordinated colors, company czars, Bollywood stars moreover the politicians of the ruling alliance Mahayuti. In attendance had been eight union ministers, 12 chief ministers of BJP-governed states, and 5 chief ministers of its allies. There was extra noise in regards to the occasion than the unfolding of the occasion itself as a result of, after 12 lengthy days of negotiations between the allies – BJP, Shiv Sena and Nationalist Congress Party – solely chief minister Devendra Fadnavis and his deputies Eknath Shinde and Ajit Pawar took the oath of workplace.
Conspicuous by their absence had been opposition leaders of Maharashtra and the remainder of India. Perhaps the invites didn’t exit to opposition-governed chief ministers, however the management of the opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) was invited. Neither Sharad Pawar (NCP-SP) nor any of his deputies confirmed up, neither Uddhav Thackeray (SS-UBT) made an look nor did his son Aaditya, and not one of the Congress celebration’s state leaders deem it match to attend the oath-taking ceremony. The MVA appears to be nonetheless reeling from the electoral rout and will have determined to avoid the occasion given its a number of complaints about corruption and malpractices within the electoral course of itself, together with compromised EVMs about which it formally approached the Election Commission of India. The MVA’s boycott of the occasion could be defined by this.
However, in staying away to ship a political message in regards to the integrity of the electoral course of, the MVA has allowed itself to be accused of a democratic lapse. A functioning democratic construction, of which the swearing-in of a brand new authorities is an intrinsic half, requires the ruling and opposition events to discharge their obligations in a aware method, in public curiosity. Their boycott implies that the opposition events don’t recognise the Fadnavis-led authorities or is not going to have interaction with it — which is a mockery of even the 46 seats that they’ve between the three events. The norms and protocols in a democracy can’t be topic to the whims and hurts of political events.
The numbers don’t permit for a daily Leader of Opposition within the Maharashtra Assembly now, which is a brand new low for the state Assembly in addition to its political contours. How the events now conduct themselves within the House, how they increase points that proceed to be of relevance to residents, and the way they maintain the Fadnavis-led authorities to account not a few times however constantly over the subsequent 5 years stays to be seen. And in between all this, how the opposition events conduct themselves throughout the framework of democratic functioning is essential too. The MVA leaders would have performed properly to attend the swearing-in however register a silent inventive protest.
