Who will be the next Maharashtra chief minister is a question on everybody's mind these days. It is more or less certain that the Shiv Sena-NCP-Congress government will take oath of office in a few days and the chief minister will be from the Sena.
If you ask Shiv Sainiks, they want party chief Uddhav Thackeray to be the chief minister. However, if Thackeray prefers to be a remote control, then the top contenders for chief minister’s job are Shiv Sena leaders Subhash Desai and Eknath Shinde.
Desai is the senior among the two, and is an old and trusted warhorse of Matoshree. He was a close aide of Sena founder, late Balasaheb Thackeray, and is seen as one of the most wiser and mature voices in the Shiv Sena. He missed becoming a minister in the first Sena-BJP government in 1995-1999 because the Supreme Court had barred him from contesting election at that time. A soft spoken, quiet and efficient Sena leader, Desai successfully led state industry department as the minister for industries from 2014-2019.
Eknath Shinde, on the other hand, is much junior to Desai, but was the best performing Sena minister in the Devendra Fadnavis-led government. He is credited with turning around Maharashtra State Roads Development Corporation (MSRDC), which today has projects worth over Rs 1 lakh crore in its kitty.
Shinde began as a Shiv Sena shakha chief in Thane and has risen through the party ranks. He was a corporator, standing committee chairman, chief of Thane district unit of the Shiv Sena after the demise of Anand Dighe, and became a legislator in 2004. His rise has been steady since then. He was also the leader of opposition for a couple of months in 2014, before the Sena decided to join the BJP government.
While Desai is not a mass leader, Shinde is a mass leader loved by the Shiv Sainiks. Desai, in fact, had lost 2014 assembly elections and was later elected to the legislative council. Both of them, however, are known to be efficient administrators with different styles of working though. Shinde was recently elected as the leader of Shiv Sena legislature party. Both Shinde and Desai are also representing the Sena to formulate the Common Minimum Programme (CMP) document for the foes-turned-friends coalition with the NCP and the Congress. They have been busy meeting leaders of the NCP and the Congress to prepare CMP.
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Apart from Shinde and Desai, the third candidate—a surprise one for that matter—could be Shiv Sena MP Sanjay Raut. It was Raut who, from the day of the election results, consistently maintained that this time the government will be led by the Shiv Sena. It was this demand for chief minister's post that led to the breakdown of talks between the Sena and the BJP. Subsequently, the Sena opened channels of communication with NCP and Congress. However, there is a talk in Sena circles that Raut is far too close to NCP chief Sharad Pawar and if he is chosen to lead Sena government the effective control would be in Pawar hands.
Thus, Eknath Shinde and Subhash Desai remain top two contenders for the post of chief minister in Maharashtra.
