Welfare marred by political slugfest

Mumbai: As the winter sun set over the Arabian Sea on Friday evening marking the first anniversary of the Mahayuti government’s current term, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis wore the look of a man who has weathered a storm to find a steady rhythm. Armed with a decisive mandate and a singular promise to hit the “reset” button on the state’s development engine, Fadnavis continued a quiet, relentless push towards “saturation governance” delivering welfare directly to the doorstep of the common man even though the headlines of 2025 were often dominated by coalition friction.

As the Mahayuti government turns one, the narrative is not merely about the miles of Metro rail added or the investment MoUs signed. It is equally about the bruising political reality of managing the Mahayuti – a three-legged coalition where the other two legs, Eknath Shinde’s Shiv Sena and Ajit Pawar’s NCP, often seem to be marching to their own drumbeats. For Fadnavis, 2025 has been a high-wire walk between his trademark administrative velocity and the relentless gravity of coalition politics.

Explicit Goal

Fadnavis entered 2025 with the explicit goal of reviving the “CEO style” governance that defined his 2014-2019 tenure. His first move was the resurrection of the “CMO War Room,” a monitoring unit designed to bypass bureaucratic lethargy. The results on the infrastructure front have been visible. The long-delayed phases of the Mumbai Metro have seen accelerated trial runs, and the Vadhavan Port project has finally moved from paper to groundwork.

His push for transparency – launching the ‘Maha-Netra’ portal for real-time tracking of civic works – was aimed at cutting the ‘percentage culture’ that the opposition often highlights. To his credit, the administration looks sharper, faster, and more responsive than it has in half a decade.

Coalition Conundrum

However, politics has a way of muddying the clearest of administrative waters. While Fadnavis has the numbers, the internal dynamics of the Mahayuti have been far from smooth. The elephant in the room remains Deputy Chief Minister Eknath Shinde.

Having served as Chief Minister prior to this term, Shinde has reportedly found the transition to Number Two difficult.

Sources in Mantralaya whisper of a “cold war” over file clearances. The friction creeped from administration to party organizations and came to a head last month when Shiv Sena ministers took the extreme step to boycott the cabinet meeting to protest the political poaching of grass root workers by the BJP.

If Shinde provided the friction, the NCP provided the shock. Within a month of government coming to power, a senior NCP minister had to resign following allegations of links to an accused in a heinous organized crime syndicate. For Fadnavis, who also holds the Home portfolio, this was a double-edged sword. While his swift acceptance of the resignation was meant to signal “zero tolerance,” the opposition Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi (MVA) seized the moment. “How can the Home Minister claim the state is safe when his own cabinet colleagues are dining with gangsters?” said Congress leader Vijay Wadettiwar.

The incident chipped away at the “Party with a Difference” image the BJP carefully cultivates. It forced Fadnavis into damage control mode, diverting energy from governance to political firefighting.