Reportedly the shiv sena and Bharatiya Janata Party's stormy pact seems to have settled into a period of lull as the allies scramble to reach an agreement for government formation in Maharashtra. Meanwhile on one hand, precedents from the past five years leave no doubt that this calm is only short lived. But on the other hand, the two parties' history from before that shows that notwithstanding the bickering, it's only a matter of time before they bury the hatchet, because they have nowhere else to go and hence their marriage is a political compulsion, despite their ideological affinity.
Furthermore the allies are both believers of hyper-nationalism and at least a somewhat similar idea of a Hindu rashtra. Apparently ties between the two allies have often been acrimonious ever since BJP's tally surpassed that of the Sena in 2009 bjp won 46 seats from the 119 seats it contested as compared to Sena's 45 seats from 160 constituency, but the discourse has been a notch shriller since the 2014 assembly elections when the bjp refused to play second fiddle to the Sena anymore.
Moreover the Sena was humbled by a substantially lesser tally while the BJP's tally swelled, stopping just short of a majority. Perhaps the Sena joined hands with the bjp again, even at the cost of settling for far fewer portfolios than what the bjp may have yielded in a pre-poll alliance. Also on the contrary, bjp too believes that it has the political right to expand its base in the state.
