Both as an effort to preempt its saffron alliance partner BJP from staking a claim for the chief ministerial post and to counter MNS chief Raj Thackeray in the race, the Shiv Sena on Monday began to project Uddhav Thackeray as its nominee for the top post, thus igniting the prospect of an interesting ‘Thackeray vs Thackeray’ battle in the forthcoming Maharashtra Assembly polls.
Within days after Raj announced that he would both contest and make a bid for the Chief Minister’s post, the Sena sought to hit two birds with one stone — that of ensuring that it would not lose out its claim over the top post in the State to its long-time saffron ally BJP and that of taking the MNS chief head-on in the Assembly polls — when it announced its plans to project Uddhav as its CM candidate in the polls.
Taking the BJP by surprise, Sena’s spokesperson Sanjay Raut indirectly suggested that Uddhav would be the Sena’s chief ministerial candidate. “Yesterday, Uddhavji has himself said that the Shiv Sainiks want him to become the CM. It is not just the Shiv Sainiks who want him to become the CM, even the people across the State hold the same view. I am confident that under his leadership, Maharashtra will become number-one State on the development,” Raut told mediapersons here.
Raut’s indication that the Sena is keen on projecting Uddhav as its CM candidate in the run-up to the Assembly polls has come at a time when the Maharashtra BJP — fresh from its spectacular victory in the lok Sabha polls and the advent of the Narendra Modi-led Government at the Centre has sent out a message to its alliance partner that it wants to project one of its leaders as the chief ministerial candidate. The BJP’s logic is such a projection would come in handy for the ‘Maha-Yuti’ — comprising Shiv Sena, BJP and three other constituents — in trouncing the Congress-led DF in the State Assembly polls.
Among the front runners for the CM’s post in the BJP are: senior party leader Gopinath Munde and current State unit president Devendra Fadnavis.
Fadnavis, himself a chief ministerial aspirant, sought to downplay the import of Raut’s statement, when he said, “We — be it Uddhav, Munde or myself — have repeatedly made our stand clear on the issue that the constituents of the ‘Maha-Yuti’ (grand alliance) will decide as to who will be its chief ministerial nominee. We will sit together and announce the name at an appropriate time.”
However, the Shiv Sena which — as per the seat-sharing formula worked by late Pramod Mahajan and Bal Thackeray in the 90s under which the BJP is a senior partner in the lok Sabha polls and Sena has a bigger stake in the Assembly polls in the State — does not want to let go its claim over the Chief Minister’s post to its alliance partner.
The Sena insiders argue that in the lS polls, the BJP- as per the Mahajan formula, contested 26 seats (out of the total 48 seats in the State) leaving 22 seats to the Sena.