Fear of losing the bow and arrow and the authority over Shiv Sena has made Uddhav restless. He gave various statements to hide his insecurities, but his pain was very much visible. We can see how Sanjay Raut all alone fighting the battle and media trials for Shiv Sena. Aditya Thackeray is hell-bent on reviving the Shiv Sena. He greets people and attends rallies and meetings. While speaking to the media, Uddhav Thackeray asserted that his party would again get the post of the Maharashtra Chief minister.
Thackeray believes that the Maha Vikas Aghadi, which is headed for two and a half years, was getting a lot of appreciation from people. In the interview conducted by Sena MP Sanjay Raut, Uddhav Thackeray said the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) alliance experiment led by him was not wrong and people had welcomed it. In the second part of his interview to Shiv Sena mouthpiece ‘Saamana’, Thackeray said he wants not just local body polls due in Maharashtra, but also the Assembly elections and claimed the Sena will have its CM once again for which he will tour the state to rejuvenate the party cadre.
The Shiv Sena had parted ways with the BJP after the 2019 Maharashtra Assembly polls over sharing the chief ministerial post. The Sena later tied up with the NCP and Congress as part of the MVA to form a government led by Thackeray. Last month, Sena MLA Eknath Shinde along with 39 other party legislators and some independents, revolted against the Sena leadership, leading to the collapse of the Thackeray-led MLA government. Without naming the present state CM Shinde, Thackeray claimed when the Shiv Sena was with the BJP, Shinde would say the BJP is harming the Sena.
Maharashtra politics is a national topic now; there is no certainty. Supreme Court is yet to decide on the disqualification of rebels; the election commission is yet to decide on the ownership of shiv sena and its bow and arrow symbol. Among all this mess, Shiv Sena is in a reviving mode. The state-wide tour of Aaditya is getting a suitable response. From August, Uddhav will also start touring the state. People are enrolling in the Shiv Sena in a big way. Meanwhile, BMC elections are approaching and most of the compotators are to support Eknath Shinde. This rising trend may show that BJP can rule BMC after the next election in 2022.
If re-election happens today, the biggest benefit would be the BJP as what the people got deprived of is having not given enough mandates to the BJP which, of course, they have realised and they would not be doing so again. The pact of Shiv Sena with UPA will surely hit its performance because the Shiv Sena voter & also many of the karyakartas on the ground level are furious. After all, their leader has joined. Udhav’s sudden turnaround only to teach a lesson to Modi, and BJP, may not be acceptable to the people. His popularity also has taken a beating because of these unpopular decisions of Shiv Sena. This unpopularity was visible even during the local body elections, where it is being convincingly vanquished in call corporations except the one in Thane and Mumbai. In all others, BJP made a clean sweep.
The people of Maharashtra have seen the corrupt rule of Congress and do not want the same government again. Hence, Congress had to lose in the assembly elections, many places lost deposits. No doubt Congress-NCP ruled Maharashtra for the longest period and it limited Shiv Sena to BMC. Shiv Sena never got people’s mandate, which is the reason they came to power only once. In 2014 it’s the Modi wave that got them to power being in an alliance. In 2019 also people voted for Sena considering the alliance with BJP. Somehow BJP missed the power and Shiv Sena joined hands with Congress and NCP. This betrayal was unacceptable for BJP, and sitting in the opposition, BJP gave a tough time to the Maha Vikas Aghadi government.
One of the biggest misconceptions is that the Maharashtrian vote for Shiv Sena in large numbers. People in Maharashtra do not hold this perception. Especially in Mumbai, the largest population is Gujarati and north Indians. They vote for BJP, earlier most of the rural votes were in Congress-NCP’s kitty. Unless you are referring to Maharashtrian living in Mumbai, Thane & Suburbs of Mumbai, apart from a few pockets of Maharashtra, Shiv Sena is largely a colossal failure as a party.
Shiv Sena controlled BMC which is the biggest municipal corporation in Asia. The budget of BMC which is a municipal corporation of Mumbai is much bigger than many of the smaller states of India. The share of tax contribution that the Central Government gets from Mumbai is the highest, that is the reason Mumbai is called the financial capital of India. Well! Let us come back to the major topic, who will hold the power in Maharashtra? It is going to be BJP and alliance but not Maha Vikas Aghadi again.
