Ram Shinde is yet to take charge of his new portfolio as he is trying to avoid antagonising Pankaja Munde, whom he has replaced as water conservation minister
Newly appointed water conservation minister Ram Shinde has decided to play it safe after senior minister Pankaja Munde expressed her displeasure over the CM’s decision to divest her of the department and hand it to Shinde.
Ram Shinde
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Shinde told reporters in his hometown in Ahmednagar yesterday that he would take charge only after Munde returns from a foreign sojourn. All other new ministers who were alloted portfolios late Saturday night, started working from Monday.
Shinde has a reason to delay the takeover — he cannot afford to invite the ire of Munde’s supporters, who, in protest of the Cabinet reshuffle, went to the extent of burning the CM’s effigy on Sunday. This was perhaps the first instance in the state’s political history in which party workers chose to protest in such a manner against their own CM.
“The protest has marred the BJP’s image of a disciplined party,” said a senior BJP leader. “If Munde’s unruly supporters could do such a shameful act of burning their own CM’s effigy, they can also protest in more sinister ways against Shinde if he takes charge of the department that Munde has been heading since November 2014,” the leader said, adding that Shinde was a minnow in terms of top-level politics within the BJP.
He was a minister of state before being elevated to the Cabinet rank. His promotion is a stamp of approval from CM Devendra Fadnavis and people have now started seeing Shinde as one of his confidants.
However, Shinde doesn’t want to become a sacrificial lamb in the clash between the CM and Munde, who could not only make his new job difficult but could also hamper his chances in future elections. He represents the Jamkhed assembly constituency, where Munde’s Vanjari community is a sizeable vote bank. Beed, traditionally a Munde bastion, is adjacent to Jamkhed.
Munde, daughter of BJP heavyweight, the late Gopinath Munde, tweeted after the reshuffle that she would not attend a world water leaders’ event in Singapore on Monday because she wasn’t the minister in charge of water conservation department. Fadnavis tweeted back, instructing Munde to attend the programme as a senior minister.
Ire against CM
Munde’s supporters took their cue from her tweet and took the fight to the streets. Munde tried to pacify her supporters, but resentment continues to simmer in her camp, with several angry posts being circulated on social media. One such post, which portrays the CM as a teenager, said that Fadnavis should not forget the favour that the late Gopinath Munde had done him in his political career.
Sources in the BJP said that Munde was deeply hurt because the water conservation department had assumed a lot of significance in view of Fadnavis’s flagship Jalayukta Shivar project, which is aimed at turning the lives of distressed farmers of the state through minor irrigation, as major irrigation has failed because of faulty planning and massive corruption in the erstwhile governments. Munde was divested of the employment guarantee scheme department as well, but she is reportedly not too disappointed by that.
People close to the CM said that Fadnavis wanted a full-time minister to look after water conservation because Munde has not been able to do justice to Jalayukta Shivar project, and complaints of substandard work had reached the CMO.
It is said that Fadnavis will try to pacify Munde and convince her to focus on her remaining prime departments — rural development and women and child development. And if she doesn’t mend her ways, the CM is expected to take a hard-line approach.
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