Sena may Rethink on Support to Yashwant Sinha, Congress Embarrassed on “Agnipath”

Manas Dasgupta

NEW DELHI, July 11: Faced with the threat of the Shiv Sena parliamentary party following the course of legislature party of rebellion against the leadership, the Sena chief and the former Maharashtra chief minister Uddhav Thackeray may be forced to rethink his party’s stand on the presidential elections later this month.

All the 16 Shiv Sena Members of Parliament, who attended a meeting called by Thackeray in Mumbai on Monday, unanimously wanted the party declare its support for the NDA presidential candidate Droupadi Murmu. Sena MP Gajanan Kirtikar claimed after the meeting that all 16 MPs agreed that Murmu “is a tribal woman and that’s why they should vote for her.” Maharashtra has a chunk of tribal population. There is no whip or Presidential elections and the MPs can vote according to their will.

So the suggestion by the MPs — all Uddhav Thackeray loyalists — could be the precursor to a possible change in the stance of the party, which has so far supported the joint opposition candidate Yashwant Sinha. In fact Thackeray was one of the serious advocates for the combined opposition field a strong candidate for the presidential poll to challenge BJP’s nominee as a precursor to the opposition throwing a challenge to the BJP and NDA in the 2024 Parliamentary elections.

But even after his party being one of the sponsors’ of Yashwant Sinha’s candidature, Thackeray may be forced to declare support for Murmu lest his MPs follow the course of the party MLAs a large majority of whom rebelled against his leadership and joined hands with the BJP to form the Eknath Shinde government. Thackeray is expected to take a decision on the matter within a couple of days since the presidential elections are due on July 18.

Thackeray is trying hard to maintain control of the party founded by his father Balasaheb Thackeray. Last week, he had appointed a new Chief Whip in the Lok Sabha — a move seen as an effort to insulate the parliamentary party from the rift. Monday’s meeting — called by Thackeray amid the ongoing crisis — was meant to test the waters. Six of Sena MPs — including Eknath Shinde’s son Shrikant Shinde — stayed away. The Sena has 19 MPs in the Lok Sabha and three in the Rajya Sabha.

The suggestion to back Murmu had come up earlier, indicating a rift within the MPs as well. Sena MP Rahul Shewale, an adherent of the Shinde faction, had asked Thackeray to vote for the NDA candidate. But Thackeray had not voiced a response.

On Monday, party MP Sanjay Raut, known to be close to Thackeray, left without talking to the media. There is a buzz that Raut was not in favour of supporting Murmu and is still ready to back Yashwant Sinha. Last week, Sena’s Arvind Sawant, a Thackeray loyalist, had thrown a challenge to the prospective rebels. “We are the Shiv Sena party. We have 19 MPs. Those who want to leave, can resign and leave. And if they want to form like this conspiracy, like the conspiracy that took place in the Assembly, that should be two-thirds – that should not be less than 12 MPs. Are there 13 MPs with them?”

A shift in a few Sena votes may not greatly alter the outcome of the Presidential polls in which the government appears to have a numerical advantage to get Murmu through. Besides its own NDA members, its candidate has already received support from Naveen Patnaik’s Biju Janata Dal, Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal (United), Jagan Mohan Reddy’s YSRCP, the Telegu Desam Party, Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party, a splinter group of the Samajwadi Party, and some others.

Though on different count, the Congress too faced a big embarrassment on Monday over its protest letter on the controversial Agnipath recruitment scheme for the armed forces. Senior leader Manish Tewari — a G-23 member who earlier handed the party moments of deep discomfort with his public criticism — refused to sign the protest letter to Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, who was briefing a parliamentary committee on the scheme. “It will be silly to unnecessarily politicise the matter,” sources close to Tewari quoted him as saying.

Earlier, Tewari had verbally opposed the Agnipath scheme, whose terms had triggered large-scale outrage. The mandatory retirement for most after four years with any pension or gratuity, has enraged young people in the backdrop of large-scale unemployment and economic depression.

The letter, listing a set of demands,  was signed by six opposition MPs including Congress’s Shaktisinh Gohil,  Trinamool Congress’s Sudip Bandyopadhyay and Sougata Roy, Nationalist Congress Party’s Supriya Sule and Rashtriya Janata Dal’s AD Singh.

The MPs have demanded withdrawal of the “Agnipath” scheme pending consultation and report from the standing committee of defence. Most opposition parties, including the Congress, dubbed “Agnipath” the latest blunder of the government in line with demonetisation and farm laws which were later repealed.

The committee on Defence chaired by Singh has 20 members– 13 from Lok Sabha and around 7 from Rajya Sabha — from across the board. At the meeting, Rajnath Singh said, “The Agnipath scheme has not been implemented suddenly. It has been a long, thought-out process”.

The Army chief, General Manoj Pande, said the short-term recruitments would not compromise the operational readiness of the forces. The new recruitment scheme has not been drawn up to reduce pensions, “there is no linkage,” added the Defence Secretary.