Thackeray camp’s strength reduced to 15 as another MLA shifts loyalty
The Shiv Sena hit an all-time low in its 56-year-old history on Monday as its rebel leader and Maharashtra’s Chief Minister Eknath Shinde not only won convincingly on the floor of the Maharashtra Assembly but he also began systematically to dismantle the very edifice of the Uddhav Thackeray-led parent party Sena and usurp the legacy of late Bal Thackeray.
Hours before Shinde won the confidence vote on the floor of the Assembly, Speaker Rahul Narwekar had reinstated Shinde as the Shiv Sena Legislature Party leader in place of Ajay Chaudhary who had replaced the rebel Sena leader earlier, removing all technical glitches for the new Chief Minister seeking a trust vote in the Assembly.
In a confidence vote held nearly a fortnight after Shinde rebelled against his party president and then Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray, as many as 164 MLAs voted for the motion of confidence brought in by the new Chief Minister, while 99 voted against it.
As many as 21 MLAs — including Congress’ two former Ministers Ashok Chavan and Wadettiwar — were absent during the trust vote, while three MLAs refrained from voting in a 287-member Assembly (the strength of the 288-member Assembly has come down to 287, following the death of a Shiv Sena MLA).
Coming as they did a day after the rebel Sena faction led by Shinde had virtually taken over the party’s legislature party office at Vidhan Bhavan by sealing the office, Monday’s developments established that the new Chief Minister is going about in a clinical manner to dismantle the parent party Shiv Sena layer by layer.
The Uddhav-led Shiv Sena suffered one more jolt on Monday as yet another Shiv Sena MLA Santosh Bangar joined the Shinde-led camp.
Ironically enough, Bangar had voted the Opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA)’s nominee Rajan Salvi of the Sena in the Speaker’s election held on Sunday. After Bangar switched sides, the Shiv Sena found itself in a miserable state, as it was reduced to a 15-MLA party in the State Assembly.
Shinde could not have dealt such a severe body blow to the Shiv Sena in more opportune time than now as the Uddhav Thackeray-led Sena prepares to retain power for the crucial Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), the richest civic body in the country. The Shinde camp has already made inroads into the party’s civic set up by wooing a sizeable number of party sitting, former corporators and workers at the gross-root level. Together with the Shinde camp, the BJP -- which till a few years ago ruled the BMC in alliance with the Shiv Sena - will whole hog try to capture power in the BMC, from where the Shiv Sena has been deriving its strength for years on end.
Finding it difficult to come to terms with his new position of being the leader of a party with markedly eroded strength, the once-powerful Shiv Sena president Uddhav Thackeray appeared bitter when he charged that the BJP - which worked in tandem with Shinde in dislodging the MVA Government in the State - had made up its mind to “finish” it in the State.
Addressing the Sena cadres at the Shiv Sena Bhavan, Uddhav dared the Shinde camp-BJP combine to go in for mid-term polls in the State “BJP wants to finish the Shiv Sena. Instead of fighting like this (engineering rebellion and splitting the Sena), let’s go to the people’s court. If we are wrong, then people will make us sit at home and vice versa in your case,” the former Chief Minister said.
On his part, Shinde expressed that the Shiv Sena, led by him, and the BJP - which would form an electoral alliance for the 2024 - would jointly win more than 200 seats in the 2024 Maharashtra Assembly polls. “If we do not win 200 seats, then I would go to my village and do farming,” he said.
In his speech delivered after winning the confidence vote in the State Assembly, Shinde charged that he had taken the extreme step of rebelling against Uddhav after being “suppressed” for a long time. “I was suppressed for a long time…what happened did not happen in a just one day,” he said. He said that he had repeatedly opposed the Sena’s “unnatural alliance” with the NCP and the Congress.
Fifty-eight-year-old Shinde, who invoked the names of late Bal Thackeray and Shiv Sena’s late strongman from Thane Anand Dighe, broke into tears when he recalled his association with late Dighe. “My father is alive, while my mother is no more. I could not give much time to my parents. They would be asleep when I came and would go to work when I slept. I could not give much time to my son Shrikant. When my two children drowned in a boat mishap, I had gone into depression. At that time, it was Dighe who brought me out of it and encouraged me to take up party work. I owe a lot to Dighe. He mentored me right from the beginning”.
“I am a simple Shiv Sainik, a simple karyakarta…I never aspired for any post…I don’t believe that I am the CM,” Shinde said.
While speaking about his agenda as the Chief Minister, Shinde said: “We will establish aam aadmi’s Raj…public Raj…people’s Raj…. we are for Hindutva and development…that is the agenda that would be carry forward”.
Earlier during the trust vote, MLAs Abu Azmi and Rais Shaikh (both of the Samajwadi Party) and Shah Farukh Anwar (AIMIM) abstained from voting.
Eleven Congress MLAs -- Ashok Chavan, Vijay Wadettiwar, Dheeraj Deshmukh, Praniti Shinde, Jitesh Antapurkar, Zeeshan Siddiqui, Raju Awale, Mohan Hambarde, Kunal Patil, Madhavrao Jawalgaonkar and Shirish Chaudhary -- were absent during the floor test. (Chavan and Wadettiwar came late and were unable to enter the House at the time of the vote).
The NCP legislators who remained absent from the House were Anil Deshmukh, Nawab Malik (both of whom are currently in the custody of Enforcement Directorate (ED), Dattatray Bharane, Anna Bansode, Babandada Shinde and Sangram Jagtap. The two ailing BJP MLAs -- Mukta Tilak and Laxman Jagtap, also could not come to the House, while BJP’s Rahul Narwekr could not vote as he is the Speaker. AIMIM MLA Mufti Mohammad Ismail also did not attend the session.