n In a shocking revelation, the Opposition Congress and Shiv Sena claimed that the current Chief Minister and Shiv Sena’s rebel faction leader Eknath Shinde –who was part of the then Sena-BJP alliance—had reached out to the Sonia Gandhi led-party in 2014 and 2017 for an alliance to form a new Government in the State.

In a disclosure that sought to establish that rebel Sena leader had been trying to move from the saffron alliance Government and form a new Government in alliance with the Congress and NCP, senior Congress leader Ashok Chavan said that Shinde was part of a delegation that had met him in 2017 to topple the then Devendra Fadnavis Government in alliance with the then Opposition Congress-NCP combine.         

Talking to media persons at his home town of Nanded,  Chavan claimed that the meeting had happened  at a time when the Shiv Sena-BJP alliance was on the verge of breaking ahead of the 2017 municipal elections in the state. Both the saffron allies fought the civic body polls separately

“Ahead of the municipal corporation elections in the state, Shinde had met me along with others in my office in Mumbai with an offer that he would support the Congress and NCP to form a new government in place of the then Devendra Fadnavis  government. I had then told Shinde and other leaders present in the delegation to consult NCP chief Sharad Pawar first. I don’t if they consulted Pawar saheb or not,” Chavan said.

Simultaneously,  Shiv Sena’s  former minister Chandrakant Khaire said Chavan’s claim and said that, Shinde along with a group of around 15 Sena MLAs had met Congress with a proposal to form a Sena-Congress-NCP government in the state.”But nothing happened aftewards,” Khaire said.

Another senior Sena leader Vinayak Raut  also alleged that  Shinde wanted to “snap ties with the BJP” and ally with the Congress-NCP.

The revelations by Chavan and Khaire shoule be seen in the light of the oft-repeated claim by Shinde  that he had rebelled against he had led the rebellion  against Shiv Sena President and former chief minister Uddhav Thackeray he did not like  the Sena chief’s decision to  go against the Hindutva ideology and  ally with the Congress-NCP alliance to form government in the state.

It may be recalled that in the third and fourth week of June this year, hinde had led the rebellion within the Shiv Sena with the support of 40-odd party MLAs. leading to the resignation of Uddhav Thackeray as the chief minister and fall of the MVA government in the  state.    

Having played a crucial part in the fall of the Uddhav Thackeray-led MVA Government in Maharashtra, the BJP on June 30 anointed rebel Shiv Sena leader Eknath Shinde as the chief minister and its own former chief minister and senior party leader Devendra Fadnavi as the deputy chief minister.