Flutter in the Fortress | Maharashtra
Despite Fadnavisâs impressive report card, the BJP-Shiv Sena will underestimate the rival Congress-NCP at their own peril.
At a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) convention in New Delhi on January 12, party president Amit Shah had compared the upcoming general election to the third battle of Panipat. The defeat of the Maratha army at the hands of Afghan invader Ahmad Shah Abdali, he said, led to 200 years of colonial rule. Coming just days after the BJP's electoral defeat in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, the analogy was a sort of clarion call. Shah was also reaching out to his party's traditional allies-most notably the Shiv Sena in Maharashtra, where 48 Lok Sabha seats are at stake.
The Sena, the BJP's oldest ally, had been playing hard to get in recent months. The two parties had jointly contested the 2014 Lok Sabha election, in which the BJP
