More trouble for Shiv Sena: After legislators, its MPs may jump ship

After a division in the legislature party that saw 40 legislators, including chief minister Eknath Shinde, join hands with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to form government, the threat of a similar split looms large over Shiv Sena in parliament as its MPs seek a patch-up with their erstwhile saffron partner

After a division in the legislature party that saw 40 legislators, including chief minister Eknath Shinde, join hands with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to form government, the threat of a similar split looms large over Shiv Sena in parliament as its MPs seek a patch-up with their erstwhile saffron partner.

Uddhav Thackeray and Eknath Shinde.

While Rahul Shewale, the Sena MP from Mumbai South Central, has sought that the party support the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance’s nominee Draupadi Murmu in the presidential polls due on July 16, another MP has openly lent his voice for a rapprochement with the BJP. Sadashiv Lokhande, a second-term MP from Shirdi in Ahmednagar district, has said that around 15 MPs from Sena are eager for a truce between the saffron parties.

The issue is likely to be discussed at a meeting between Sena MPs and party president Uddhav Thackeray on Monday.

Sena has 19 MPs in the Lok Sabha comprising 18 from Maharashtra and one from the union territory of Dadra and Nagar Haveli. This is the highest bench strength Sena has ever had in the lower house. It has three Rajya Sabha members.

“In a discussion with MPs, everyone felt this [an alliance with the BJP] must be done,” Lokhande told HT, adding that around 15 MPs shared this sentiment.

He said that the Sena MPs had been elected to the Lok Sabha as candidates of the Sena-BJP alliance. “Those who were elected as BJP-Sena candidates have defeated opponents from the Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP),” said Lokhande, while commenting on the practical difficulties in breaking bread with the Congress and the NCP in the Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi (MVA).

Incidentally, Lokhande is a former BJP man — he was elected to the assembly from Karjat in Ahmednagar for three successive terms since 1995. In 2009, Lokhande left the BJP and joined the Raj Thackeray-led Maharashtra Navnirman Sena to fight the assembly polls from Kurla, but lost. He was elected as a Sena candidate to parliament in 2014 and 2019.

Sena MPs said that their party’s alliance with the BJP and the Narendra Modi wave had helped some of them get elected to parliament from parts of Vidarbha and even Mumbai. The simmering communal sentiment in parts of Maharashtra like Marathwada also makes it untenable to snap ties with the BJP and contest as part of the MVA, which includes “secular” parties like the Congress and the NCP. A section of Sena MPs had also launched a track-II diplomacy effort to bring about a reconcilement between Thackeray and Shinde, before the Sena president was deposed as the chief minister.

So far, Shrikant, who is Shinde’s son and an MP from Kalyan, and five-term Yavatmal-Washim MP Bhavana Gawali, who is the senior-most parliamentarian from the party in Maharashtra, have thrown in their lot with Shinde. Last week, Sena sought that Gawali be replaced as the party’s chief whip in the Lok Sabha by Rajan Vichare, an MP from Thane, and Shinde’s rival within the party.

Inducing a split in the Shiv Sena parliamentary party may also bolster the claim of the Shinde faction that they are the “real” Sena. Sena leaders loyal to Thackeray, however, claim that they enjoy the support of party functionaries and the rank and file, including a majority in the 282-member strong national executive. Already, 66 of the 67 corporators in the Thane Municipal Corporation have joined Shinde, followed by those in the Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation.

Sources within Sena said that Thackeray may not be ready to reconcile with the dissidents or the BJP, and may instead choose to brazen it out. A Sena MP, who is among the fence sitters, said that most of them faced a dilemma — either be branded as a “traitor” by the party if they went with Shinde, or stand the risk of development works in their constituencies and even chances of re-election being affected if they stayed with Thackeray and the MVA.

Parbhani MP springs a surprise

There was a flutter on Sunday as Sanjay (Bandu) Jadhav, the Sena MP from Parbhani, was present with the chief minister for a puja of Lord Vithoba at Pandharpur on Ashadi Ekadashi.

However, Jadhav, who is a former two-term MLA from Parbhani, said he had been a warkari for 24 years and walked to Pandharpur from Alandi. “I have been present at all mahapujas since Vilasrao Deshmukh was the chief minister… my presence [at the puja] caught everyone’s eye due to the prevailing political situation.”