Uddhav offers to quit, Shinde says Sena must leave MVA immediately
MUMBAI: The Maha Vikas Aghadi government led by chief minister Uddhav Thackeray appeared to be on the brink as the day drew to a close. Shiv Sena’s rebel faction led by urban development minister Eknath Shinde may well command the support of the bulk of the party’s MLAs.
The faction refused to relent even as Thackeray made an emotional appeal to the rebels in a Facebook live address, offering to “resign in a minute” even if one of them asked him to do so and saying he would be happy if a Shiv Sainik became CM.
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While Shinde claimed the support of over 40 MLAs, the faction led by him submitted a letter signed by 34 MLAs to
Governor BS Koshyari, reinstating him as leader of Shiv Sena in the legislature, a post from which he was sacked on Tuesday. While two of the 34 MLAs —Nitin Deshmukh and Kailash Patil — returned to Thackeray’s fold, two other Sena MLAs, Yogesh Kadam and Gopal Dalvi, and two independents, Chandrakant Patil and Manjula Gavit, reached Surat on Wednesday morning and left for Guwahati in a chartered flight. State water supply minister Gulabarao Patil of Sena also joined the rebels in Guwahati.
“If my own people do not want me, then I will go in the next second,” he said in a Facebook live shortly after the rebel faction sent a letter signed by 34 MLAs to governor B S Koshyari and declared that Shinde would retain the
post of Shiv Sena chief.
Thackeray said the CM’s post came to him unexpectedly. “I had no experience in administration, but things took
a turn and we formed a government with Congress and NCP. When NCP chief Sharad Pawar insisted I should
take the CM’s post, I did so because I do not step away from a challenge,” he said.
Hitting back at the rebel faction which has raked up the Hindutva issue, Thackeray said, “Shiv Sena and Hindutva cannot be separated from each other. I am the first CM to speak about Hindutva in the assembly,” he said.
On the charge that Shiv Sena was no longer the party that Balasaheb Thackeray had founded, he said the party
continued to do well after his father’s death in 2012. “In 2014, 63 MLAs from Shiv Sena were elected. In the last 2.5 years in the MVA, several were part of the government,” he said.
In a dig at the rebel faction, he said, “Are you getting the numbers with love or threats?”
