Ahead of its floor test in the Maharashtra Assembly, it was clear that the 13-day-old Devendra Fadnavis-led government would >win its vote of confidence , even though with 122 MLAs the BJP was 22 short of a majority. The 41-member-strong Nationalist Congress Party had indicated from the start that it would abstain from voting, an act that, by reducing the effective strength of the House, would have ensured the BJP government a safe passage. By the time voting day came, the NCP had gone a step further in agreeing to vote for the government, and that would have given it a margin of 19 votes. Yet, on Wednesday the BJP chose to allow its victory to be tarnished — even undermined — by refusing to agree to a division, or an actual head-count: instead, despite vociferous protests by members of the Congress and the Shiv Sena, some of whom entered the well of the Assembly, the minority BJP government won its confidence motion through a voice vote. The question then arises: if the BJP could have anyway won through actual counting of heads, why would it opt for a voice vote, one that has much less legitimacy, and that too at the very start of a five-year term?
It is hard to believe that the BJP, buoyed by the continuing popular sentiment in its favour, lacked the confidence to go for an actual vote. More plausible is that the BJP did not wish to be seen as taking support from the NCP, a party that it targeted sharply not just through the election campaign but in the years that it was in the opposition, for gross acts of corruption. If the NCP, that had presided over the Irrigation Ministry for a decade, for instance, was seen as responsible for a financial scandal that reportedly ran into thousands of crores of rupees, forcing NCP leader Ajit Pawar to resign from the post of Deputy Chief Minister, there were other scams that NCP leaders such as Sunil Tatkare and Chhagan Bhujbal were accused of. For the BJP to be seen now as taking support from a party that has been so closely associated with graft in the name of providing a “stable” government, its leaders possibly felt, would cast a shadow over its promise of providing good governance and a clean and transparent administration. But, in the weeks ahead, the Fadnavis government could find it hard focussing on the job at hand, with the Sena accusing it of “strangling democracy” and the Congress warning that it would not allow any business in the Assembly to be conducted till the government obtains a fresh trust vote, and threatening to bring a no-confidence motion against newly-elected Speaker Haribhau Bagade who overruled the demand for division. The new government may have to face a vote on the Governor’s Address, for which it will have to marshal its forces again. Clearly, not a propitious beginning.