As Shiv Sena MPs desert Uddhav for Shinde, Sanjay Raut continues firing 'back-stab' posts

After MLAs, as MPs desert Shiv Sena, spokesperson of the party Sanjay Raut continues to fire 'backstabbing' allegations. On Twitter, the Member of Parliament posted a photo of Shiv Sena founder Balasaheb Thackeray with his son and incumbent party supremo Uddhav Thackeray and wrote, 'when counted the daggers stabbed on the back, it was exactly the same as the number of people embraced'. The MP concluded the post with 'Jai Maharashtra'. 

As of now, 12 MPs - Shrikant Shinde, Dhairyasheel Mane, Sadashiv Lokhande, Hemant Godse, Hemant Patil, Rajendra Gavit, Sanjay Mandlik, Shrirang Barne, Rahul Shewale, Prataprao Ganpatrao Jadhav, Krupal Tumane, Bhavana Gawali are in the Shinde camp. While six MPs - Vinayak Raut, Arvind Sawant, Gajanan Kiritkar, Sanjay Jadhav, Om Rane Nimbalkar, and Rajan Vichare are in the Thackeray camp. Kalaben Delkar is yet to disclose her affiliation.

Shinde along with the 12 MPs met Om Birla, the Speaker of the Lower House of Parliament with the request to replace Vinayak Raut, a loyalist of Uddhav Thackeray, with Rahul Shewale as the floor leader. 

'Back-stabbing' claim of Sanjay Raut

"This is what happened," Sanjay Raut had captioned a tweet with a picture of a stabbed back on June 30, a day after Uddhav Thackeray had tendered his resigned as the Maharashtra CM, as well as a Member of the Legislative Council of the state. MLAs of Shiv Sena led by Eknath Shinde went incommunicado as part of a rebellion against Uddhav Thackeray and his supporters, following which they solidified their numbers in Assam for a week. Though disqualifications were initiated, the Supreme Court ordering a status-quo was sufficient to compel Uddhav Thackeray to resign. The next day the breakaway faction of the Shiv Sena and the BJP formed the government under Eknath Shinde as CM and Devendra Fadnavis as Deputy CM. 

The BJP and Shiv Sena had contested the 2019 Assembly elections in Maharashtra in an alliance. However, after the alliance emerged victorious, Sena parted ways from the BJP-led coalition over the issue of the Chief Minister’s post, which the Shiv Sena wanted to occupy first, for at least a period of 2.5 years. 

NCP leader Ajit Pawar subsequently joined hands with the BJP to form the government. BJP's Devendra Fadnavis was then sworn in as the Chief Minister and Pawar as his Deputy at a hush-hush ceremony in the Raj Bhawan. Interestingly, even back then, Raut had said "NCP leader Ajit Pawar had stabbed the Sena in the back by joining hands with the BJP to form the government in Maharashtra."

However, Pawar returned to his party after three days and the Fadnavis government collapsed. The Shiv Sena had then forged an alliance with the NCP and Congress to form the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government in the state.

Image: Twitter/@RautSanjay61