PUNE:
Eknath Shinde, whose June 2022 rebellion against Uddhav Thackeray caused a split in the Shiv Sena, on Sunday alleged that in the undivided party, the ex-Maharashtra chief minister treated functionaries as “house-helps.”
“Balasaheb Thackeray (Uddhav’s father and Sena founder) used to consider us friends, but he (Uddhav) thinks of us as house-helps,” Shinde, who leads the faction that the Election Commission recognises as the “real” Shiv Sena, said at a meeting of party workers at Ramtek in Nagpur.
He also explained the reason behind his revolt against Uddhav Thackeray.
“I broke away because the party’s ideology was being compromised,” he said, referring to Uddhav’s decision to ally with the Congress and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), which are not ideological allies of the Sena. The Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) coalition was formed days after the October 2019 Maharashtra assembly elections, in which the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-Sena combine, was re-elected. However, a dispute over who would get the chief minister’s chair, made Uddhav snap ties with long-time and ideological ally BJP, and go with Congress-NCP.
The Uddhav Thackeray-led MVA government collapsed in June 2022 after Shinde rebelled. The latter then joined hands with the BJP, and became the chief minister of Maharashtra, a position he currently holds. In July 2023, the “real” Sena and BJP were joined in the ruling alliance by Ajit Pawar and his faction in the NCP, after Pawar revolted against his uncle and NCP co-founder Sharad Pawar.
In February, the Election Commission declared the Ajit-led group as the “real” NCP. On the other hand, Uddhav’s Sena faction is now named Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) and Sharad Pawar’s NCP faction is called NCP (Sharadchandra Pawar).
Meanwhile, at Sunday’s Nagpur meeting, Shinde also appealed to people to vote for the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections so that Prime Minister Narendra Modi gets a third consecutive term.
“The seat-sharing details within the ruling alliance will be completed in two to three days” he later told reporters at the Nagpur airport.
The assembly polls in Maharashtra will be held later this year.
