Political drama has gripped the home state of Bollywood

THE AGEING stars, tired tunes and awkward dance moves had the makings of a box-office flop. But recent plot twists in the politics of Maharashtra, a big, rich Indian state that is home to Mumbai and its cinema industry, are proving a showstopper. Unlike a product of Bollywood, however, this protracted tale of treachery, hubris and midnight manoeuvring has real consequences for the state’s 112m people.

It started in October, with an election that handed an easy majority of the state assembly’s 288 seats to the incumbent coalition. This alliance involved two Hindu-nationalist parties, the Bharatiya Janata party (BJP), which commands the national government in Delhi, and Shiv Sena, a hot-headed local party built on the prickly pride of the Marathas, a dominant regional caste. The pair had collaborated for decades, jointly ruling Maharashtra since 2014 with little friction, despite Shiv Sena’s resentment that the much larger BJP, led by Narendra Modi, India’s charismatic prime minister, has encroached on its turf. But rather than get quietly back to work after this election, the brothers-in-arms fought over the spoils.

Before the vote, the two were said to have sketched a deal whereby Devendra Fadnavis of the BJP, the serving chief minister, would continue for another half of the office’s five-year term before handing it to...