Losing political ground

After a brief interregnum in the Opposition, Devendra Fadnavis made a comeback last year, but things have gone from bad to worse since then

Devendra Fadnavis’s last speech as chief minister in the Maharashtra Assembly (November 2019) ended with a poem written by him and it ended with “mee punha yein” (I’ll be back). This caused great hilarity in Maharashtra’s political circles, with Jitendra Awhad adding his own postscript via a TikTok video that played the chief minister’s announcement of “mee punha yein” and a bored man standing before the camera and saying: “bring some chuna (lime) along with you when you come back”.

The autumn of 2019 marked a turning point in Maharashtra politics: The 36-day drama that eventually led to the installation of