Deputy Chief Minister Eknath Shinde seems to have managed to split the Shiv Sena for a second time. This time sees six MPs deserting the Uddhav Thackeray camp in order to join Shinde-led Shiv Sena.
The Shiv Sena (UBT) has nine MPs and had issued a whip for a meeting that took place in Delhi on Thursday.
The six MPs who defied the whip include Nagesh Patil Ashtikar, Sanjay Deshmukh, Sanjay Jadhav, Bhausaheb Wakchaure, Omraje Nimbalkar, and Sanjay Dina Patil.
Shiv Sena (UBT) leader and Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Raut has alleged that each of the rebels had been promised Rs 50 crore, and that an advance of Rs 15 crore was paid.
This is a serious allegation. The three loyal MPs that remain with Uddhav Thackeray now are Arvind Sawant, Anil Desai and Rajabhau Waje. One will not be surprised if Waje also switches sides in the days ahead.
Needless to say, Operation Tiger, as it was called, was blessed by the BJP's top leadership, which wants to destroy the Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena.
As usual, the rebels have blamed Uddhav's poor leadership and his unavailability as one of the main reasons for their split. Secretly, however, each one of them harbours the ambition to become a union minister when Prime Minister Modi carries out a cabinet reshuffle.
More than Shinde senior, the architect of the latest split is Shinde’s son, Dr Shrikant Shinde, who is a Lok Sabha MP.
He is the group leader of MPs from Shiv Sena—now in the hands of Eknath Shinde. It was he who held meetings with the rebels and micromanaged everything.
As per law, a rebel group splitting from the parent party must have two-thirds of the number of total elected representatives of that party. Shiv Sena (UBT) had 9 MPs, of which six have rebelled, keeping the number at exactly the two-thirds mark.
All these developments are taking place in the birth centenary year of late Balasaheb Thackeray. In addition, June 19 was the 60th foundation day of Shiv Sena. While Uddhav Thackeray addressed his supporters at Mumbai’s Shanmukhanand Hall, Deputy CM Shinde did it in style at the Nesco grounds in North Mumbai.
The next target of the Shinde Sena is the Thackeray Sena group in the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC)—the elections to which were held recently.
Shinde Sena group leader in BMC, Amey Ghole, is planning an operation similar to the one carried out with the UBT Sena Lok Sabha MPs.
The UBT Sena has 65 corporators in the BMC, one of whom—Deepak Sawant—was disqualified yesterday. So effectively, it has 64 corporators.
In that regard, it is said that nearly 25 corporators of the UBT Sena in the BMC are ready to switch sides, for which they are in regular touch with Ghole.
Ghole, however, is not going to make any moves till he crosses the 48-mark, as that is two-thirds of what is required to form a rebel group in the BMC. He is confident that at least 50 corporators from Uddhav Sena will split.
If the Shinde Sena’s plans bear fruit in the BMC, then there is real trouble for Uddhav Thackeray—he will be vanquished and slowly erased from the political landscape of Maharashtra. The real inheritor of the Thackeray legacy will then be Eknath Shinde, the man who started out as an autorickshaw driver.
