A Shiv Sena veteran, who has been with the party for over 40 years, a follower of late Bal Thackeray, a close confidante of Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray and one of his key troubleshooters, Maharashtra minister Eknath Shinde made the party face its worst political crisis. In the thick of the night on June 21, when CM Thackeray had just retired for the day, Shinde left Mumbai for a hotel in Surat with at least 21 Sena MLAs. As per reports, he only told them that he wanted them to meet someone.
Barely a few hours later, the entire company of legislators, led by Shinde, was on a chartered flight on the way to a five star resort in Guwahati. By dawn of June 22, the damage had already been done. The Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government was caught unawares as it woke up to an existential crisis—with the rebellion by a majority of its MLAs, the government was bound to fall.
Speaking over the phone from the comfort of his hotel suite to a TV channel, Shinde sounded firm and assertive. "Yes. I have more than the number of MLAs you can think of. I have 46 of them. My only aim is to take the ideology of Hindutva forward because that is what the Shiv Sena was built on," he said.
By engineering a political crisis that unfolded under the very nose of the government and shook the foundation on which it rests, Shinde (58) showed that he had the power to cause a split in the Sena, just like some of his predecessors—Chhagan Bhujbal and Narayan Rane. From working in a beer brewery in Thane and driving an autorickshaw to make ends meet, to becoming one of the most powerful leaders in the Shiv Sena who could boast of personal proximity to the Thackerays, Shinde has come a long way.
A school dropout from Satara who came to Thane scouting for odd jobs, Shinde's association with the Shiv Sena goes back to the mid-1980s. Upon joining, in a short span of time, he moved up the ranks from a shakha pramukh of Kisan Nagar in Thane. He was first noticed by the Shiv Sena's Anand Dighe, the then Thane district chief under whose tutelage he was made the corporator. In 2000, Shinde faced twin tragedies when he lost two of his three children to a drowning accident in the state and went into depression. He was at the verge of taking his own life when Dighe successfully dissuaded him and encouraged him by making him the party's group leader in Thane municipal corporation with a view to keep him engaged.
Shinde's first major turnaround came about in 2001 when his mentor and guide Dighe died. He then took control of the party's Thane unit and became its chief go-to-person. His exceptional people management, social and oratory skills led the party to give him the opportunity to contest the 2004 assembly elections. He won by a good margin and went on to become Shiv Sena's key in-charge of Thane district. In 2005, when Raj Thackeray and Narayan Rane brought along a vertical split in the Shiv Sena, Shinde ensured that the ripples were not felt in the Sena's Thane unit he was heading.
Shinde's performance as Thane's key troubleshooter got him close to Uddhav Thackeray which further boosted the young Shinde's morale, and he went on to build the party's Thane unit aggressively. In 2009, he was elected as the MLA from the Shiv Sena and at the same time, sensing an opportunity, the Congress went to him with an offer of a ministerial berth, but the Sena loyalist refused.
His close association with the senior and junior Thackerays at the time, Balasaheb and Uddhav, shadowed everything else. He used his time to strengthen his support base among the MLAs, emerged as the party's most prominent voice of the region and established a firm grip over the party's Thane and Palghar districts.
In 2014, Shinde got elected again and went on to become the leader of the opposition. When Sena joined the Devendra Fadnavis-led BJP government at the time, Shinde bagged the prestigious public works department (PWD) portfolio as a Sena minister and launched the ambitious Mumbai-Nagpur express highway project.
In 2019, after Sena's equations with the BJP had turned sour over the issue of the chief ministerial candidature, and the party needed the support of the Congress/NCP to come to power, Shinde was not in favour. While the BJP wanted one of its own to take the top job, Thackeray had maintained that the top post would be shared by both parties for equal time, two-and-a-half-years. As Thackeray was close to sealing the deal with NCP and Congress, Shinde, along with his supporters, expressed his opposition to such an alliance, but was ignored. When Thackeray became the CM, Shinde too began aspiring for the position of second-in-command in the Sena given his experience, expertise, proximity to the party chief and trust he earned over the years. That didn't happen, and with the entry of fresh blood in the form of Aaditya Thackeray, Shinde began to feel sidelined.
Yet, he wouldn't proclaim that he defected. Before boarding the flight, Shinde said in no uncertain terms that he was not leaving the Sena, and that the Sena MLAs have not revolted against the party but their only wish is forming an alliance with the opposition BJP. At the Surat airport, Shinde said, “Our wish is that Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray should form a government in alliance with the BJP. I have not quit the party.”
