Maharashtra’s Urban Development and Public Works Minister and influential on Monday at 11:17 pm Shiv Sena leader, Eknath Shinde, tweeted a tweet expressing happiness over the election of two Shiv Sena candidates in the Legislative Council elections. A few hours later, about 20 MLAs of Shinde and Shiv Sena, “Incommunicado” GoneIn a serious setback to the Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi (MVA) coalition government as well as its key player, the Sena, are now headed for an imminent split.
While Shinde has always taken an oath of allegiance to the Shiv Sena and Thackeray, in recent months there have been murmurs that the way the party was being run and old soldiers like him were being treated ” dissatisfied”. In the past two years, as the Shiv Sena underwent a generational change in its leadership, it has sidelined many of its senior leaders and a new guard emerged under the leadership of party president and chief minister Uddhav Thackeray’s son Aaditya Thackeray.
While Shinde has been in charge of two major portfolios and was the next most important minister of the Shiv Sena after Thackeray, there was talk that he was not able to participate freely in running his portfolios as all his decisions were reportedly overseen by Thackeray. and his inner circle.
A top state official said Shinde was “angry” as he was marginalized in the urban development department. As its minister, he is the chairman of the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA). However, the environment minister, Aaditya Thackeray, often attended meetings of the MMRDA, which was attended by its commissioner, so Shinde did not take much interest in its affairs.
The rise of Aditya, who is also the president of Yuva Sena, and his attempt to groom leaders of the party’s youth wing like Varun Sardesai, also troubled Shinde. Once considered the tallest leader of the party after the Thackeray family, the rise of youth leaders in their ranks is said to have surpassed Shinde.
In the past two years, especially since the outbreak of the Covid pandemic, Shinde’s access to Thackeray’s residence Matoshree was also restricted, with the assumption that the latter was not looking for his lawyer like they did before.
Shinde, who has been a proponent of Shiv Sena-BJP The MVA is said to be particularly annoyed by Uddhav’s decision to join hands with the NCP and Congress to form the government. He also felt that in the last two years the party’s allies, especially the Sharad Pawar-led NCP, were hurting the Shiv Sena’s prospects.
Some MVA government officials say such instances have come to the fore in the last one year, which point to a lack of ease between Uddhav and Shinde, who is now believed to be a resident of Surat in BJP-ruled Gujarat. About 20 are hidden in the hotel with the party. MLA.
Sources say that matters like Shinde’s security and his say in police transfers were some of the factors that reflected his lesser influence on the Uddhav-led government.
An official said Shinde enjoys ‘Z’ category security on paper, while he was keen to give ‘Z+’ security to people like Uddhav and Pawar. “However, the state intelligence department (SID) took orders from the CM, providing him ‘Z’ security, a level below ‘Z plus’. It was a subtle way of indicating to him the hierarchy of power,” a source said. Said Shinde was believed to be annoyed by this.
Another reason for Shinde’s displeasure was that he struggled to make his point in his police posting in Thane, his home ground. Recently, the transfers of five IPS officers in and around Thane were put on hold after the NCP minister-led home department released the transfer list. “Finally accepted Shinde’s demands and transfers were stopped, the question was why his recommendations were not taken into account in the first place, as he had a direct talk with the CM,” the source said. Although these are minor issues, it shows that Shinde’s race was not easy and he had to struggle within his own party.
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Sources also said that in the last one year, Uddhav hardly met any party leader, mainly because of his health condition. “Earlier when the CM used to visit the ministry, leaders used to come to meet him as everyone was allowed inside. Now working with him mainly from Varsha, CM bungalow where access is limited, not many people can meet him,” the source said. “Even during Covid, citing health reasons, some bureaucrats had ensured that the CM did not meet several other party leaders, increasing their dependence on these bureaucrats.”
Amidst discontent in a section of Shiv Sena against the party’s functioning for some time, Shinde was said to be waiting and assessing public sentiments, concerned that there was a growing distrust in the Thackeray family. The announcement may trigger a reaction from his party loyalists in the state. ,
Back-to-back setbacks in the MVA to the Rajya Sabha and the Legislative Council elections in the state in just ten days proved to be the final straw, leading Shinde to engineering a split in the party.
(with inputs from Yogesh Naik)