MUMBAI: Watching the developments in Maharashtra, realpolitik analysts would award round one to the BJP. Ajit Pawar has been seduced into the BJP-Shiv Sena (Shinde) government, Sharad Pawar’s NCP has been wrecked, and chief minister Eknath Shinde has been put in his place. What better outcomes could there have been? To the practitioners of Chanakya Neeti in the BJP, all shame can be covered by the fig leaf of success, so no sleep need be lost over ethics. This is but a reprise of past seductions, of Shinde himself last year and Jyotiraditya Scindia in Madhya Pradesh. We know from the Mohini Bhasmasura template how it ends for the seduced.

But, the implications of the entice-and-destroy drama in Maharashtra have wider significance than making the current pirate regime in Mumbai more secure. In fact, it was in no real danger. Deputy CM Devendra Fadnavis was running the show with the CM as cat’s paw. The anti-defection sword posed over the Shiv Sena MLAs is likely to stay suspended mid-air until the end of term. As for the dispute between Ajit and Sharad Pawar over ownership of the NCP, we know how that will play out: the Election Commission, being the umpire, always bats for the BJP.

There is basis to believe the ruling party raided the NCP with an eye on the national elections coming up in 2024 rather than any immediate gains in Maharashtra. The move came 10 days after 16 major opposition parties met, coordinated by Sharad Pawar, in Patna and resolved to do something the BJP dreads: field a united opposition candidate against every ruling party nominee in the Lok Sabha election. Despite all its fractures, the opposition parties made surprising progress in Patna, and were to take it forward at the next meeting in Bengaluru this month.

Wrecking the NCP would serve the BJP’s designs as it would not only hobble Pawar, the chief architect of opposition unity, but also improve its own chances of retaining all the seats it won in the Lok Sabha from Maharashtra in 2019. This latter point, the need to retain its 2019 tally in the big states — UP (63), Maharashtra (23), Bihar (17), Madhya Pradesh (28), Karnataka (25), Gujarat (25), Rajasthan (24), West Bengal (18) — is a crucial first principle in the BJP’s strategy for the upcoming general election. It’s a tall order for a two-term incumbent, especially as it was the maximum haul possible in some of those states the last time out.

Until the electoral reverse in Karnataka in May, the BJP harboured fantasies that it could worm its way into the South, using communal polarisation tactics and the Modi persona, to offset potential losses in those states up north. That explains the baby showers the party staged for the PM in Kerala and Karnataka during that election campaign. But it came to nought and sowed doubts into the notion that Modi’s charisma is sufficient for success.

The onslaught on the NCP is more likely the result of panic, not a bold raid on the enemy. Evidence of this is the BJP’s sudden decision to change its party leadership in several states. The mandate for the new nominees is to stop trash-talking and make friends with regional parties. The BJP’s name man in Telangana, G Kishan Reddy, is tasked with building bridges to the BRS. In Andhra Pradesh, D Purandeshwari is mandated to assess which of the two, the YSRCP or the TDP, will win the greater number of seats. These are the moves of a party hedging its bets rather than one whistling past the winning post.