Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Oct 7: After playing a virtual drawn match in holding parallel Dussehra rallies in two separate grounds in Mumbai, the former Maharashtra chief minister Uddhav Thackeray responded earlier than the deadline in opposing before the Election Commission of India any move to allocate Shiv Sena poll symbol of bow and arrow to his distractors the Eknath Shinde faction.
After the Shinde faction represented before the ECI for early decision on the Sena poll symbol in view of the November 3 byelection for the Andherai East state Assembly constituency, the commission had sought Thackeray faction’s response by 2 P.M. on Saturday.
Thackeray, however, in his letter on Friday said the faction led by Eknath Shinde cannot claim the bow-an-arrow symbol as he and other MLAs in his camp had “voluntarily quit the party.” The Andheri East bypoll will be first electoral contest between the two factions since the Thackeray government was unseated in June.
Eknath Shinde, who became Chief Minister after the Sena mutiny backed by the BJP, has majority of the party’s legislators on his side in the assembly and Parliament. His faction has even managed to get its members recognised as the Shiv Sena by the state Assembly speaker who is from the BJP.
But Uddhav Thackeray, who technically remains the party chief, has told the panel that the Shinde camp’s legislators should not be counted because a disqualification plea against them is before the Supreme Court. He is now gathering affidavits of support from party members — the target is over 5 lakh — to hold on to the party his father, Bal Thackeray, founded over 50 years ago. Mr Shinde, too, claims Bal Thackeray’s “true legacy of Hindutva.”
A court battle is on over whether the anti-defection law can unseat Mr Shinde and his MLAs which, however, seems unlikely as the faction have more than the two-third strength among party legislators to avoid disqualification under the anti-defection act. But the Election Commission looks at the support of party units, too — hence, the affidavits.
The parallel Dussehra rallies by the two factions on Wednesday could not give much a conclusive result as both the rallies, Thackeray faction rally at the traditional Shivaji Park and Shinde faction holding it at the Bandra-Kurla Complex, were almost equally attended, though some Thackeray faction leaders accused the Shinde faction of “managing crowds” while the attendance at the Shivaji Park was “spontaneous.”
The Shinde faction’s claim to the symbol was primarily seen as a bid to deny it to the Thackeray group, and thus keep it in abeyance until a final decision on the “real” Sena is taken. Its immediate target is the November 3 bypoll, for which Team Thackeray has fielded Rutuja Latke, widow of Ramesh Latke whose death necessitated the election. Team Shinde is backing the candidate of ally BJP, Murji Patel, a municipal corporator.
The Congress and the NCP have decided to support the candidate of the Thackeray faction, their partner in the Maha Vikas Aghadi government that had come into being after Mr Thackeray broke up with the BJP “over leadership issues” after the 2019 polls.
The Thackeray faction has already suffered a blow in the Supreme Court last month when it refused to stay the proceedings before the poll panel for deciding on the poll symbol till the apex court completed the case on the ‘real” Shiv Sena based on various constitutional factors.