Shiv Sena
This is a collection of articles archived for the excellence of their content. |
Contents |
History
1992: Bal Thackeray ‘s resignation
Zeeshan Shaikh, May 3, 2023: The Indian Express
Shiv Sena founder Bal Thackeray had pulled a move when an unprecedented attack on his style of functioning from detractors within and outside the Shiv Sena.
Stung by the revolt of Chhagan Bhujbal and 17 other MLAs from rural Maharashtra, and jibes from critics within his party that he was turning it into his fief, Thackeray on July 18, 1992, wrote a signed article titled “Akhercha Jai Maharashtra (The final Jai Maharashtra)” in party mouthpiece Saamana, announcing that he was resigning from the party once and for all.
“Even if one Shv Sainik stands against me and my family and says I left the Shiv Sena because of you or you hurt us. I am not prepared to continue as Shiv Sena chief for one moment,” the Sena founder wrote.
The article had the desired effect and two days later, on June 20, a sea of Shiv Sainiks landed outside the Shiv Sena Bhavan to plead with Thackeray to reconsider his decision. Senior Sena leaders were heckled and manhandled by the crowd for not being loyal enough to the party founder and many of Thackeray’s potential detractors were cut to size. This, in effect, consolidated Thackeray’s grip on the party. Thackeray “magnanimously” acceded to the Sainiks’ requests and stamped his authority forever on the party, which swept into power nearly three years later in 1995 along with the BJP.
There is still suspense about what prompted Pawar to announce his resignation and whether the Maratha stalwart will agree to reconsider his decision. However, by putting up a public show about his plans to not head the party he has sent the subtle message that he remains the most dominant force in the NCP.
Finances
2016/ Rs 85cr of Sena’s Rs 87cr receipts came from Videocon alone
Home appliances maker Videocon Industries appears to be the Shiv Sena's biggest benefactor. The company , part of a $5bn Mumbai-headquartered group accounted for all but a fraction of the donations which the Shiv Sena has disclosed to the Election Commission of India.
A total contribution of Rs 86.84 crore was shown as received by Sena from corporates and non-corporates in 2015-16. Of this, a whopping Rs 85 crore came from Videocon, controlled by the industrialist Rajkumar Dhoot, who has represented Sena in Rajya Sabha for three consecutive terms.
Last year too, Videocon had contributed to the Sena's kitty , but the amount was relatively meagre: Rs 2.83 crore. This year, it has been lavished funds on the Sena while donations to oth er parties have been slim. Videocon gave Rs 25 lakh to NCP.
Ideology
Caste and politics
Suraj Yengde, June 26, 2022: The Indian Express
The Shiv Sena has always been an issue-based, reactionary congregation. It adopts issues and works on them till these are used up and moves on to the next. The first instalment of its politics was about the rights of Marathis against Gujaratis and then South Indians. It moved towards Hindu nationalism gradually, thus sustaining its relevance.
The Hindutva brand that Uddhav espouses now is, in a sense, that of his grandfather Keshav Thackeray. Hindutva for the Thackeray patriarch meant self-rule and a strike against Brahmin priesthood. Keshav was known for his staunch anti-Brahmin, lower-caste politics, partly owing to the subordination of his caste group in the varna hierarchy, as a group that worked as scribes or pen smiths and accountants. Uddhav too has lately been calling out the Brahmin in the room, by hinting at the damage caused by the R S S’s Brahminism.
Keshav’s participation in the Satya Shodak movement with roots in the rural base of the Shudras and Dalits also helped Bal Thackeray at the start by giving him a ready base. The core constituency of the Sena was at the time the poor, migrant, working-class population of western Maharashtra in Mumbai. After the Samyukta Maharashtra Movement, it started making inroads among others.
While caste-less politics helped the Sena, it has also been pushed into a corner on the matter. One of its most powerful OBC leaders, Chhagan Bhujbal, left the party over its stand on the Mandal agitation for OBC quota.
The Shiv Sena is also known for its organisational capacity. Its network runs from gullies to the heart of the city. However, this does not translate into an ability to govern the state as a mature party. Girish Kuber, the editor of Loksatta, rightly commented in his column for
The Indian Express that the Sena is more a loose, unorganised social body instead of a responsible, statutory political party. The cadres do not see themselves as capable of self-governance; this is after being in power twice. More than social action, they are trained in street-level instant justice, building them popularity at the ground level. However, as the leaders go up, they find politics must move beyond.
Then, part of the reason the Shiv Sena was able to spread beyond the Mumbai region was the hope it offered, even if accidentally, to Marathas insecure about the rise of a Dalit rights movement. The firebrand Dalit Panthers is believed to have inspired, in part, the aggressive tactics of the Sena. Even the symbolism of Dalit Panthers was tapped into by the Sena, by choosing tiger as its symbol, against the leaping panther of the Dalit outfit.
If the above have been both a boon and a bane, another drawback has been the gradual transformation of the Sena into the kind of party (read the Congress) that once Bal Thackeray bitterly criticised. While he himself rose to the status of a demi-god, somewhat in the mould of the Gandhis, the reins of the party have moved on to first his son and grandson.
The rest of the Sena leadership too resembles other parties — most of them are Brahmins, alongside Marathas, with some backward caste names. Though the party has a base in the backward castes of the non-Mumbai region, its leaders are mostly of dominant castes from Mumbai.
The difference is more pronounced since Uddhav allowed Aaditya a freer hand as he himself battled several ailments. An important piece of the puzzle is Uddhav’s wife Rashmi. She remains an invisible hand in Thackeray politics.
On Secularism and Godse: 1991-2019
Vaibhav Purandare, Nov 29, 2019: The Times of India
Shiv Sena has for long considered as an abomination the word “secular,” now part of the Uddhav Thackeray-led Maha Vikas Aghadi’s common minimum programme. And its founder Bal Thackeray had openly praised Nathuram Godse nearly three decades before Pragya Thakur spoke in favour of Gandhi’s assassin.
After the I&B ministry had, in an advertisement issued on Republic Day in 2015, left out the words ‘secular’ and ‘socialist,’ Sena MP Sanjay Raut, one of the forces behind the new ‘secular’ alliance, had demanded that the two words be “officially dropped from the Preamble of the Constitution through an amendment.” Raut had said Sena founder Bal Thackeray stood for a Hindu Rashtra and there was “no space for secularism in Balasaheb’s mind.”
The Sena founder had said, at an election rally in Pune (where Godse and his family had lived) in May 1991, that Nathuram’s act was “a matter of pride and not of shame and had prevented a second Partition.” He had alleged that Gandhi had “betrayed the nation” by not preventing Partition and “insisted on handing over Rs55 crore to Pakistan,” all of which had “genuinely infuriated” Godse.
NCP leader Chhagan Bhujbal, sworn in as minister on Thursday, was in the Sena at the time and had remarked amid the controversy that “statues of Nathuram Godse should be erected instead of those of Gandhi.”
Interestingly, NCP chief Sharad Pawar was also a part of this controversy. Pawar was then CM of Maharashtra, and some Congressmen had blamed him for the controversy, saying Pawar had started it by saying often that “BJP and Shiv Sena were synonymous with Gandhiji’s killer Godse.”
Hindutv(a), 2022
Alka Dhupkar and Vaibhav Purandare, March 25, 2022: The Times of India
Bone of contention
Two things stand out in the case of Bal Thackeray. First, the late Shiv Sena founder was the first to fight an election openly on the issue of Hindutva, in 1987. This was the assembly bypoll from Vile Parle in Mumbai, which the Sena won. For the speeches he made during the poll campaign, Thackeray was barred by the Election Commission from voting for six years.
Second is Thackeray’s ownership of the demolition of the Babri Masjid in December 1992, something that even the BJP’s top netas were loath to accept in the aftermath of the mosque’s razing, despite L K Advani’s rath yatra during the Ram Janmabhoomi agitation.
According to the Sena’s ex-ally BJP, all that is in the past, and the Sena today, led by Thackeray’s son Uddhav — who is in power in Maharashtra with the Sena’s one-time foes Congress and NCP — is very different and has compromised on “the basic principle of Hindutva, which is uncompromising nationalism.”
That is why BJP netas have been saying they will not be surprised if the Sena responds positively to the AIMIM’s offer to join the ruling Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) in Maharashtra. Barbs like “janaab” have also been hurled at the Sena by the opposition in Maharashtra, and Uddhav’s recent quote that “we made a mistake by mixing religion and politics”, is also being used to bracket the Sena with the so-called “pseudo-seculars.”
The arrest of MVA minister Nawab Malik and the accusation that he has been in league with gangster Dawood Ibrahim, who was responsible for the 1993 Mumbai bomb blasts, and the Sena’s refusal, apart from that of Malik’s own party NCP, to get him to resign from the state cabinet, is also being cited to “establish” the Sena’s “abandonment” of Hindutva nationalism.
But Sena leaders point out that their Hindutva is “inclusive” and does not leave out “nationalist Muslims”, whereas the BJP’s Hindutva “is divisive and creates a split in society.”
Clearly, the Sena, at the moment, is fighting a rearguard action, because, while its founder held the title of ‘Hindu Hriday Samrat’ in the 1990s, it is PM Narendra Modi who has since walked away with that tag in the minds of Hindu nationalists, BJP supporters and those sympathetic to the BJP-R S S and larger Hindutva parivar.
Decisions taken by the Modi government on Ayodhya, Varanasi, Balakot airstrikes, defanging of Article 370 in Kashmir, and even the recent film, Kashmir Files, have seemingly bolstered this claim, prompting the Sena to hit out strongly in order to prove that the BJP has “no monopoly over” Hindu nationalism.
Sena speak
Sena MP from Mumbai South Arvind Sawant tells TOI+: “Balasaheb Thackeray made it crystal clear that the Hindutva we believe in is not based on hatred but on true patriotism. A Muslim who will not support a terrorist Muslim is ours, he used to say. He said we don’t want Hindus who only sound bells in temples but those who will fight when the nation is under attack.”
On the other hand, Sawant claims, “BJP’s Hindutva is like Kashmir Files. The PM appealed to everyone to watch the movie, but he neither said let’s make Kashmir a paradise once more now that Article 370 has been abrogated, nor did he ask Kashmiri Pandits to return to Kashmir. BJP’s Hindutva stops with the (creation of a) split among Hindus and Muslims. Ours is not so pretentious and selfish.”
Sena deputy leader Neelam Gorhe, MLC and deputy chairperson of the Maharashtra legislative council, describes another point of divergence. According to her, the Sena’s Hindutva is “progressive and believes in reforms.”
She also cites the work of Bal Thackeray’s father, Prabodhankar Thackeray, who was a social reformer. “Sena has always supported women’s rights and never supported Sati, child marriage or similar such things in the name of tradition, whereas BJP leaders from some states have made statements in the past backing such things,” she says. “BJP leaders now say Hindu women should give birth to many children, and their latest campaign is ‘no bindi no business.’ Even the controversy over hijab is aimed at creating polarisation.”
She also cites the instance where Bal Thackeray had “raised his voice when hoisting of the Indian tricolour in J&K was opposed by militants.”
Sena functionary and vibhag pramukh from South Mumbai Pandurang Sapkal refers to Bal Thackeray’s warning when the Amarnath Yatra had faced threats from militants. “Balasaheb threatened to stop all flights leaving from India for Haj if anything happened to the Amarnath Yatra,” says Sapkal. “He took credit for the Babri demolition. He saved Mumbai during the (1992-93) riots.” Sena MP Sanjay Raut accuses BJP of “trading in Hindutva.” “Our Hindutva is real and not like the film Kashmir Files,” he says. “BJP wants to occupy POK now, we support it, but this can’t be done by making Kashmir Files and forming a government in support of Mehbooba Mufti.”
A bigger insecurity
Prakash Akolkar, who has written Marathi book Jai Maharashtra, says “before BJP could openly start owning the Hindutva agenda, it was Sena that carried it on its sleeves proudly. Thackeray gave the famous slogan of ‘Garv se kaho hum Hindu hain.’”
Akolkar, however, adds, “CM Uddhav Thackeray, speaking in Nagpur, had said “mixing politics with religion was our great mistake”. Then why is he again falling into the BJP’s trap and claiming to be the real hardcore Hindutva-wadi leader?”
Dr Sanjay Patil, researcher at the University of Mumbai who has written a thesis on Shiv Sena’s politics, feels the Sena appears to be responding to the big political challenge it is facing.
“With the huge success of BJP under the leadership of Narendra Modi, Shiv Sena feels threatened electorally, especially over the issue of Hindutva. It has been experiencing an existential crisis due to BJP's growing political ambitions in Maharashtra and faces a threat to its Hindutva agenda due to the projection of Modi as ‘the new Hindu saviour by the R S S and BJP,’” he says. “With this kind of crisis, Sena has been desperately trying to differentiate its Hindutva from that of the BJP's since it broke its alliance in 2019.”
Patil feels the BJP’s Hindutva has its roots in cultural nationalism and Hindutva is the very basis of BJP’s formation. On the other hand, he notes, Sena was formed on the nativist ‘Marathi manoos’ plank and later adopted Hindutva as its agenda for electoral purposes. “It still does the tightrope walk with both Marathi and Hindutva as its planks and equates its Hindutva with nationalism,” he says.
Relations with other parties
1960s-2019 Nov
Nov 12, 2019: The Times of India
NEW DELHI: From backing Congress candidates in presidential polls to not fielding any contender against NCP chief Sharad Pawar's daughter Supriya Sule to even tying up with ideologically opposite Muslim League, the Shiv Sena has had a history of flirting with 'frenemies'.
So for those aware of its past, the Shiv Sena, known for its firebrand Hindutva stance, quitting the NDA on Monday and seeking support of the Congress and the NCP does not come as a surprise.
In the assembly polls held last month, the BJP won 105 seats, followed by the Shiv Sena (56), the NCP (54) and the Congress (48) in the 288-member House.
Founded in 1966 by Bal Thackeray, the Shiv Sena in its more than five decades-long journey has allied with the Congress, formally and informally.
In its initial days, it was often supported directly or indirectly by many Congress leaders and its different factions.
Noted political analyst Suhas Palshikar in his article in the Economic and Political Weekly writes that senior state Congress leader Ramrao Adik was present at the first-ever Shiv Sena rally.
Dhaval Kulkarni, the author of 'The Cousins Thackeray-Uddhav and Raj and in the shadow of their Sena' said that in the 1960s and 70s, the party was mostly used by the Congress to counter influence of the Left on the labour unions in the city.
The party in 1971 allied with Congress(O) and unsuccessfully fielded three candidates for Lok Sabha in Mumbai and the Konkan region. It backed the Emergency in 1977 and did not field any candidate for the Lok Sabha polls held in that year.
"In 1977, it also backed Congress' Murli Deora in the mayoral polls," said Kulkarni. So much so that the party was also mocked as 'Vasantsena', the army of the then Vasantrao Naik who was the state chief minister from 1963 to 1974.
Palshikar writes that in 1978, when attempts to ally with the Janata Party failed, the Shiv Sena allied with the Congress (I), the faction led by Indira Gandhi.
It fielded 33 candidates for the assembly polls. All 33 lost in the anti-Indira wave.
In one of the most unlikely alliances, the Sena also allied with the Muslim League. Veteran journalist Prakash Akolkar, in his book on Shiv Sena titled 'Jai Maharashtra', writes that for winning the Mumbai mayoral polls in the 1970s, Shiv Sena also allied with the Muslim League.
For this, the Sena supremo also shared stage with Muslim League leader G M Banatwala at Mastan Talao in Nagpada in South Mumbai. If it was used by the Congress to end the Left dominance on trade unions in Mumbai, the Sena allied with Madhu Dandavate's Praja Socialist Party in 1968.
The bonhomie between the Congress and the Sena ended in the 80s after the death of Indira Gandhi and the ties between the two were not the same. The relations only deteriorated during the terms of Rajiv Gandhi, Sonia Gandhi and later Rahul Gandhi.
“It was also the time when the Sena was growing up at the cost of the Congress and from there it took a turn,” journalist Vaibhav Purandare, author of 'The Sena Story' and 'Bal Thackeray- the Rise and Fall of Shiv Sena', said.
This was also the time when the Sena tilted towards Hindutva and gravitated towards the BJP. The late 80s and 90s changed the character of the party which moved towards hardline Hindutva.
The Shiv Sena, however, broke ranks from the BJP-led NDA and voted for Congress backed Pratibha Patil and Pranab Mukherjee in presidential polls.
The equation between the Thackerays and the Pawars goes back to more than five decades – both were fierce rivals separated by conflicting ideologies but thick friends in private life.
Sharad Pawar in his autobiography 'On My Terms' writes that despite being fierce rivals, how he and his wife Pratibha would visit Matoshree for “gupshup” and dinner.
He also recalls that when he was suffering from cancer in 2004, Bal Thackeray gave him a list of “several commandments” related to diet. In private, Pawar says, Thackeray addressed him as 'Sharadbabu'. In 2006, when Pawar's daughter Supriya Sule contested the Rajya Sabha polls, Thackeray did not field any candidate.
"Sharadbabu, I have seen her (Sule) since she was a knee-high girl. This is a big step in her career. My party will make sure that she goes to Rajya Sabha unopposed," Pawar said quoting Thackeray's telephonic conversation with him.
When Pawar asked about the BJP's opposition, the NCP president says the senior Thackeray told him, “Oh, you don't worry about Kamlabai (the BJP)”.
Incidentally, the NCP fielded a lightweight against Thackeray's grandson Aditya, who was the first in his family to enter electoral politics. He won by a margin of over 67,000 votes in the recent assembly election.
With the BJP
2000-19
Sujata Anandan, March 8, 2022: The Times of India
One morning in July 2000, Bal Thackeray woke up to find Mumbai carpeted by platoons of central security forces. That is how he learnt that the Congress-NCP government, sworn in a few months earlier, was about to act on its promise to throw him behind bars for allegedly inciting riots in 1992-93 through incendiary writings in his newspaper, Saamna.
Rather than face the ignominy of an arrest, Thackeray chose to surrender before the magisterial court designate, to hear his case. The magistrate, fortunately for Thackeray, dismissed the case as time-barred – it was more than seven years since the original crime – and Thackeray returned home a free man.
But neither Thackeray nor his son Uddhav were able to forgive what they saw as a betrayal by the BJP. The party was in power at the Centre and the Congress-led Maharashtra government could not have accomplished the arrest without the Centre's help.
Wary of the kind of violent reaction Shiv Sainiks might indulge in following Thackeray's arrest, the Maharashtra government appealed to the Union home ministry for central forces to contain the fallout of the arrest.
BJP strongman L K Advani, who professed a deep friendship and respect for Thackeray, was then the Union home minister. Yet he readily acceded to the Maharashtra government's request and provided several platoons of paramilitary forces to the state – without a word of warning to Thackeray about what was afoot.
This is something the Shiv Sena leaders have not forgotten to this day, and that is why, among other points of betrayal and distrust, Uddhav refers to the BJP as “saapacha pilla" – the spawn of a snake – to whom the Shiv Sena fed milk for nearly 30 years, helping it to grow but which is now ready to bite the hand that fed it. On the eve of the budget session of the Maharashtra assembly, Uddhav added for better measure, “We know very well how to crush such snakes. We will not tolerate their nonsense anymore.”
Of course, Uddhav and the Maha Vikas Aghadi government are rattled by the misuse of central agencies against their members, but the distrust of the BJP goes deeper. The Thackerays were able to forgive the Congress for they believed the party was only being true to its publicly-stated promise to arrest Thackeray when he came to power, but Advani's stab in the back in the hope that the arrest would decimate the Shiv Sena, leave it leaderless, and thus leave the field free for his own party, has been always considered unforgivable by Uddhav and his father.
Accordingly, Thackeray thought nothing of voting for Congress presidential candidates in 2007 (Pratibha Patil) and 2012 (Pranab Mukherjee) despite being in an alliance with the BJP.
When the party cried foul, he pointed to various acts of their betrayal, which included ignoring Thackeray's demands for a fair distribution of seats until he threatened to shift the Sena vote from the BJP in 1998, reinstating the Srikrishna Commission (which eventually indicted Thackeray for the 1992-93 riots) during its 13-day government in 1996, failing to support the Sena in the Raj Thackeray-Ramesh Kini murder case despite holding the home department in Maharashtra (an appeal to then Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda had to be made to get the CBI off their backs), etc. When leadership changed in the BJP, Narendra Modi, far from trying to take the Shiv Sena along, kept the party at a distance throughout his 2014 Lok Sabha campaign. Believing the voters now heeded no one but Modi, the BJP snapped its alliance with the Shiv Sena just ahead of the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.
There was not much public mention, but the BJP then believed that with several stents in his heart fitted recently, Uddhav would never be able to campaign or win any number of seats to make a difference to the final outcome. Yet in barely 15 days, Uddhav pulled off a stupendous victory, racing ahead of the incumbent Congress and NCP, and the BJP had to seek the party's support again.
But then Devendra Fadnavis’ ‘put up or shut up attitude’ as chief minister further soured ties between the two parties. Also, Uddhav held Amit Shah a liar for allegedly refusing to acknowledge a power sharing arrangement between the two parties.
Why Uddhav refused to cede first shot at the government in Maharashtra in 2019 is also rooted in the continuing feeling of betrayal by the BJP and his conviction that his former ally was all set to destroy his party as it has virtually done with its allies in other states.
His surprisingly graceful conduct in the office of chief minister of Maharashtra, his redefining of Hindutva in the liberal mode wherein you can be a devout Hindu without having to crush Muslims to feel superior and his exemplary management of the two Covid waves have all distanced him further from the BJP, which was expecting a downfall sooner rather than later. The targeting of his son Aaditya over the Sushant Singh Rajput case has further added to the quarrel.
The BJP has also never considered its allies worthy of common courtesies – like greetings on birthdays or a thank you for help sought and rendered. Balasaheb Thackeray never forgot A B Vajpayee's birthday on December 25 each year, yet no one in the BJP remembered to greet Thackeray on his birthday less than a month later.
The Congress, despite being in opposition, never forgot the date, even before the advent of social media. Neither did then chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh fail to visit Matoshree, the Thackeray residence, soon after Pratibha Patil's election in public acknowledgement of the Sena’s support for Patil. Might seem like small things before a larger goal of attaining power but as Sharad Pawar once said about Bal Thackeray, the latter knew how to abuse politically and invite you to dinner the same evening in a tacit apology which might never be uttered in words.
Uddhav too sets a lot of store by personal friendships and has redefined the Shiv Sena's politics in a more liberal mode, virtually ridding the party of its lumpen elements and making it acceptable to previous critics. His is not the politics of violence and vengeance any longer, and that is why the relationship with the BJP is over.
And though the Congress and NCP may have been political rivals, they are now on the same side of the fence simply because Uddhav’s distrust of the BJP overpowers any sense of rivalry and otherness with regard to the other two parties.
The BJP will never be able to win him over.
The real Shiv Sena
Bharti Jain, February 18, 2023: The Times of India
New Delhi : In a big setback to the Uddhav Thackeray faction, the Election Commission relied on the ‘test of majority’ in the party legislative wing to allot the name ‘Shiv Sena’ and its poll symbol ‘bow and arrow’ to the group led by Maharashtra chief minister Eknath Shinde. EC ruled that the Thackeray faction may retain the name ‘Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) and symbol ‘flaming torch’ — allotted to it as part of an interim EC order — till the completion ofthe bypolls to Chinchwad and Kasba Peth assembly seats in Maharashtra.
EC: Uddhav Sena can decide on poll symbol after byelection
From: Bharti Jain, February 18, 2023: The Times of India
The Uddhav Thackeray faction can decide after the Chinchwad and Kasba Peth assembly bypolls whether to retain the ‘flaming torch’ symbol or opt for another ‘free’ poll symbol for future elections, a senior EC functionary told TOI.
EC directed Shinde-led Sena to amend the 2018 party constitution in line with Section 29A of the RP Act, 1951 and existing guidelines issued by the commission on registration of political parties regarding adherence to internaldemocracy. EC examined four key issues while adjudicating the Sena ‘symbol’ case: whether the petition dated July 19, 2022, filed by the Shinde faction was maintainable in view of the pending disqualification proceedings against the Sena MLAs; whether a split had occurred in the party; what test to apply for adjudication of the dispute; and which faction is entitled to use the symbol ‘bow and arrow’ that was frozen earlier in an interim order by EC pending settlement ofdispute. The poll panel concluded that the proceedings were maintainable as the conditions under Para 15 of the Symbols Order were fulfilled. It said the impact of pendency of “disqualification proceedings” was comprehensively argued in theSupreme Court and Delhi HC, adding EC’s jurisdiction in “deciding disputes under Paragraph 15 of the Symbols Order is separate and independent from that of the jurisdiction of the Speaker with respect to disqualification proceedings under the Tenth Schedule”.
EC further concluded that a split in the party was indicated by holding of separate conventions by the two factions (on June 21, 2022), declaration of the same as unconstitutional by the other group and conflicting claims of separate leaders as head of theparty.
Giving its rationale behind recognising the Shinde faction as the “real” Shiv Sena, EC said it was forced to rely on the ‘test of majority in the legislative wing’ as no conclusion could be drawn on the basis of other tests laid down in the Sadiq Ali judgment of the SC —namely, ‘test of aims and objects’, ‘test of party constitution’ or the ‘test of majority in the organisational wing’.
Stating that the outcome of the majority test in legislative wing “clearly reflects qualitative superiority… in favour of petitioner (Shinde)”, EC said the 40 MLAs supporting Shinde had garnered 36,57,327 votes out of total of 47,82,440 votes (76% of votes polled by 55 winning MLAs in the Maharashtra assembly poll in 2019). This contrasts with 11,25,113 votes garnered by 15 MLAs whose support is claimed by Thackeray group (23.5% of votes polled in favour of winning 55MLA).
Similarly, EC added, the 13 MPs supporting Shinde had garnered 74,88,634 votes out of 1,02,45143 votes (73% of votes polled in favour of 18 MPs) in the 2019 Lok Sabha poll. In comparison, 27,56,509 votes were garnered by five MPs supporting Thackeray (27% of votes polled in favour of 18MPs).
EC rejected the ‘test of aims and objects’ as neither of the Sena factions had made significant averments on thistest.
Applying the ‘test of majority in the organisati on wing’, EC found that neither of the factions had provided details of actual existing strength of the Rashtriya Karyakarini , apex body of Sena organisational wing.
YEAR-WISE DEVELOPMENTS
2024 June
Chaitanya Marpakwar, June 5, 2024: The Times of India
Mumbai: With his Shiv Sena (UBT) winning 9 of the 21 Maharashtra Lok Sabha seats it contested as part of the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) alliance, the results are a mixed bag for Uddhav Thackeray, who has lost the official party name and symbol to the rival Eknath Shinde-led formation.
Thackeray had built a narrative of betrayal around the ‘mashaal’ or flaming torch (his symbol), ever since Shinde mobilised a majority of Sena MPs and MLAs to ally with BJP two years ago. Sena (UBT) has won two seats more than the Shinde-led party and seven of 13 in which it was pitted against the latter. In Mumbai, where the party was founded, Sena (UBT) won three of the four seats it contested. But it has lost in Konkan, which was another of its strongholds.
“I had expected we would win more seats. We have certain suspicions…in Mumbai North West, we will challenge the election of Ravindra Waikar. We have lost the seat in Konkan, this is a surprise but we will see why this happened,” Uddhav said.
The results mean redemption for Thackeray, who recast a party founded on hardline Hindutva ideals to make common cause with Congress and NCP. Shinde’s charge that the Thackerays reneged on party founder Balasaheb’s core values haven’t stuck. The outcome is also significant because Sena (UBT) held on despite snapping ties with BJP, which was seen as the dominant partner in Lok Sabha campaigns. Thackeray is now in a position to be the opposition’s CM face for the Maharashtra assembly polls in Oct.
“Sena’s core Marathi voters have stayed with Thackeray and he has managed to add Muslim and Dalit voters. This makes him the most acceptable face for assembly polls,” said an observer. The LS results also show vote transfer can take place among MVA allies. With the state showing strong anti-incumbency amid a farm crisis and anxiety about jobs and price rise, Thackeray will be in mission mode for the assembly polls. Sena (UBT) functionaries also expect many workers and mid-level office bearers from the Shinde group to return. While Thackeray has said that his doors are shut for defector MLAs and MPs, he may take back mid-level functionaries and grassroots workers. “Uddhav may go on an overdrive to woo former corporators and shakha-level workers even if MLAs and MPs aren’t taken back,” said an observer. Come Oct, Sena (UBT) would also eye a big chunk of assembly seats within MVA.
