It was yet another example of how time has been speeded up. When many newspapers packed off their final editions on Friday night, the Shiv Sena’s Uddhav Thackeray was expected to take charge shortly as Maharashtra’s chief minister in an unlikely coalition with the Nationalist Congress Party and the Congress.
On Saturday, India woke up to the news that Bharatiya Janata Party’s Devendra Fadnavis had been sworn in early that morning for his second term as chief minister, with Ajit Pawar of the Nationalist Congress Party as his deputy.
Television channels and news websites flashed out the news.
Indian Express Executive Director Anant Goenka took it all in his ironic stride.
Fadnavis’s swearing in brought to an end the uncertainty that had existed since the results of the state assembly election results were announced on October 24. Fadnavis’s BJP came through as the single-largest party with 105 seats in the 288-member assembly, but no outfit had a clear majority. The Shiv Sena won 56 seats, the Nationalist Congress Party 54 seats, and the Congress 44 seats.
Though the BJP had fought the election in an alliance with the Sena, its coalition partner in the previous government, the two began to squabble about how power would be shared in the new dispensation. The Shiv Sena claimed that before they went into the election, the BJP had agreed to share the chief minister’s position with its coalition partner over the government’s five-year term. The BJP denied it had made any such promise.
As the Sena and BJP squabbled, a curious coalition seemed to be emerging: the Sena seemed like it would be the lead partner in a government that would include the National Congress Party and the Congress. For several days, these three parties were involved in discussions about how they would share power and also attempted to reconcile their diverse ideological positions.
The BJP, it seemed, was well and truly out of the game.
On Saturday, though, it turned out that NCP leader Ajit Pawar signed on to support the BJP. The BJP said that Pawar had the support of all the 54 NCP legislators. His uncle, NCP veteran Sharad Pawar, claimed that Ajit Pawar had acted without his consent.
As events played out at a breakneck speed on Saturday, Twitter users were shocked and amused at the developments.
Shashi Tharoor of the Congress used the opportunity to display the magnitude of his vocabulary.
His party colleague Milind Deora, who is also involved in the film business, reached for a Hollywood reference.
He wasn’t the only one.
Others deployed analogies from the Hindi film Andaaz Apna Apna, starring Aamir Khan and Salman Khan.
As always, cricket provided parallels to the politics. One user made a reference to the India-Bangladesh match currently underway.
For another user, this was the opportunity to use a meme showing Fadnavis running Uddhav Thackeray out as Ajit Pawar looks on.
One cartoonist got to work pretty quickly.
Another noted that his work earlier in the week had proved prophetic.
He wasn’t the only one to use an animal metaphor.
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