Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, June 21: After completing two and half years in the office, the three-party Maha Vikas Aghadi government in Maharashtra led by Shiv Sena, reached on the brink of collapse on Tuesday as at least 22 of the Sena members, including three ministers, rebelled against the leadership and surreptitiously left Mumbai on Monday night to be camping in a resort in Surat in the BJP-governed Gujarat.
Reports available from Surat indicated that the rapprochement bid of the Maharashtra chief minister and the Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray with the rebel leader and his one-time close aide Eknath Shinde has failed to yield any result and the rebel group has decided to hold their ground.
After initially refusing to allow Thackeray’s two emissaries including his close associate Millind Narvekar to meet Shinde in the Surat hotel, the Surat police later allowed the meeting to be held but the emissaries failed in their mission. Not one of the rebel MLAs agreed to return to Mumbai and Shinde reportedly reiterated his conditions for rapprochement, Sena must quit the MVA and join hands with the BJP to form a government.
Amidst the BJP’s demand for the Thackeray government to quit office claiming that it had lost the majority in the present 287-member state Assembly, the Sena chief convened a meeting of the his party legislators and adopted a resolution removing Shinde as the leader of the group in the state Assembly and appointed Ajay Choudhary in his place.
Even though the Sena spokesman and party MP Sanjay Raut insisted that there was no threat to the MVA government and the NCP and the Congress reiterated that both the parties were solidly behind Thackeray, the BJP’s return to power in the Western state seems inevitable as minus the rebel MLAs, the MVA government would be reduced to a minority.
The BJP, which outsmarted the MVA alliance in both the Rajya Sabha elections earlier this month and the Legislative Council elections on Monday night, has proved that the party enjoyed support of many of the 29-member group of smaller parties and independents who would play a crucial role if the BJP was to form a government with the help of the Sena rebels, who faced the threat of being disqualified under the Defection act.
The sudden developments is believed to had started on Monday night when Thackery reportedly reprimanded Shinde for the MVA’s loss in the legislative council elections in which the BJP won five of the 10 seats though it had the numbers on its side to win only four seats. In the recently-held Rajya Sabha elections too, the BJP managed to win three seats though it had votes only to win two seats. In both the elections, there were cross-voting from the MVA quarters to the BJP.
Shinde whose name was initially proposed by Thackeray for the chief ministership when he was reluctant to take over the mantle, was learnt to be unhappy over the increasing importance of Sanjay Raut in the party, and waiting for an opportune moment to revolt. On Tuesday, Shinde, the strongman of Thane, tweeted that he was separating himself from Thackeray’s Shiv Sena and claimed that he was the “true” follower of Balasaheb Thackeray’s “Hindutva” ideology of Shiv Sena and would never betray Balasaheb “for the sake of power.” “We are Balasaheb’s staunch Shiv Sainiks … Balasaheb has taught us Hindutva. We have never and will never cheat for power regarding Balasaheb’s thoughts and Dharmaveer Anand Dighe Saheb’s teachings,” Shinde tweeted.
He also claimed that Sena’s image had been badly damaged by its decision to form the MVA government with NCP and Congress as its partners. He claimed that Sena’s Hindutva image could be restored only if it deserted MVA and re-joined hands with the BJP.
Though the BJP Maharashtra president Chandrakant Patil denied party’s hands behind the Sena rebellion, the fact that the G-22 Shinde leads is being hosted in a state ruled by the BJP reveals the behind-the-scenes moves of the rebellion. The BJP president also said the party was open to forming a government with Mr Shinde. Soon after the developments in Mumbai, the former chief minister and the leader of the opposition Devendra Fadnavis left for Delhi where he was meeting the party national president J P Nadda and the union home minister Amit Shah apparently to discuss the Maharashtra developments.
In Mumbai, Thackeray held an emergency meeting this afternoon but the less-than-robust attendance meant it was not a significant show of strength; he has removed Shinde as Chief Whip, an important party post; for his part, Shinde has edited his Twitter bio, removing a reference to his Shiv Sena role.
Thackeray’s government, consisting of three parties – the Sena, the Congress and Sharad Pawar’s NCP – was put together in 2019 by Pawar. Amid speculation about his own role and whether he may have played a part in the crisis, Pawar said the crisis was “an internal matter of the Sena” but added that he remains fully committed to the three-party government.
Pawar who was in Delhi where he conducted a meeting of the opposition party leaders to decide the joint opposition candidate for the presidential elections, flew back to Mumbai in the evening to take stock of the political developments.
The crisis in Maharashtra reportedly owes much to Devendra Fadnavis who is believed to have facilitated Shinde group’s relocation to Surat. The crisis, however, was reportedly triggered by a reprimand from Thackeray to Shinde last night after Sena MLAS cross-voted for the BJP in key elections yesterday.
To displace Thackeray and win a vote of confidence – should it come to that – the BJP needs 37 MLAs apart from its own 106. Without the G-22, Thackeray’s government is perilously close to the majority mark at 133 (the Sena has 34 without the G-22). In the last two elections, the BJP has proved that it has support of more than 15 members from the 29-member group of smaller parties and independents.
According to the BJP sources, besides 22 MLAs of the Shiv Sena, at least 12 MLAs of smaller parties and independents are also camping in Surat under the supervision of Shinde.
Pawar termed the developments as an “internal matter” of Shiv Sena and expressed confidence in the leadership of Uddhav Thackeray to find a solution to the political crisis faced by the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government. Speaking to the media on Tuesday, Pawar said this was the third instance when someone has tried to destabilise the government and it may not succeed. “Looking at the situation, I think we will find out some solution,” said Pawar.
While Shinde has always sworn allegiance to the Sena and Thackerays, there have been murmurs in recent months that he was “unhappy” over the way the party was being run and the treatment being meted out to old Sainiks like him. Over the past two years, as the Sena underwent a generational change in its leadership which saw the sidelining of its many senior leaders and the emergence of a new guard led by Aditya Thackeray, the son of the Chief Minister.
From working in a beer brewery in Thane and driving an autorickshaw to make ends meet, to becoming the most powerful leader in the present Shiv Sena after the Thackerays, Eknath Shinde, 58, looked set on Tuesday to join the ranks of leaders like Chhagan Bhujbal and Narayan Rane who had earlier managed to engineer a split in the Sena. Worryingly for the Thackerays, Shinde has the loyalty of many party MLAs for being accessible to MLAs – especially when an appointment at Matoshree can be tough – and being generous with economic largesse.
