As said, two is a company, and three is a crowd. The ruling coalition in Maharashtra may be living up to this adage after the Ajit Pawar faction of the National Congress Party (NCP) joined Minister Shiv Sena led by Eknath Shinde and the BJP in the state government last month.
There is speculation about growing tension within the government due to Pawar's hands-on working style. On August 11, Pawar, as deputy minister in charge of the ministries of finance and planning, reviewed the work of landmark infrastructure projects such as the Mumbai Trans-Port Link (MTHL), the tramway underground in Mumbai and Pune, Pune Ring Road, Konkan coastal highway and the construction of headquarters for the Goods and Services Tax (GST) in Mumbai. While Shinde has a "war room" to oversee this work, Pawar has established a Parallel Project Management Unit (PMU), which will review these projects every two weeks. The next day, Shinde sparked speculation by staying away from the inauguration of a multi-story flyover at Chandni Chowk Avenue in Pune. The event was attended by Union Minister Nitin Gadkari, Pawar, and Deputy Minister and Interior Minister Devendra Fadnavis. It was Shinde who sped up the project after getting stuck in traffic at the Mumbai-Bengaluru highway junction last year. Instead, the CM takes place in his hometown, Dare in Satara district, and his absence is due to health problems.
This prompted senior MP and opposition leader Vijay Wadettiwar to declare that a cold war was underway between Shinde and Pawar. “Without his portfolio linked to it, the deputy minister, who holds the finance directorate, reviewed the work on infrastructure projects in the war room. The minister who ran the war room and the Ministry of Finance had no role. There is a cold war smoldering in the war room,” Wadettiwar said.
The request was denied by both Camp Pawar and Shinde's men. “Dada (Ajit Pawar) has a certain way of doing things,” said Sunil Tatkare, a former minister and Lok Sabha MP from Raigad, adding that the government has prioritized infrastructure projects. He denied Cold War accusations in the government.
Naresh Mhaske, former mayor of Thane and spokesman for Camp Shinde, said: “There is no cold war. Everyone is united and we work together. Ajit Dada has reviewed the implementation of the projects and this is under his authority as Deputy Minister.
Pawar, who is known to have nurtured his ambition to be prime minister for more than a decade, has been harsh on accusations of friction with Shinde and that he could replace Shinde as prime minister. “We are not stupid. If there is only one chair [of the Minister], how can both of us (Fadnavis and Pawar themselves) observe it? The chair is already occupied,” Pawar said. “Even when we hold meetings, it is the prime minister who makes the final decision,” he added.
