In a big blow to Uddhav Thackeray, around 3000 Shiv Sena members from Mumbai’s Worli area joined the Eknath Shinde faction on Sunday. This comes ahead of the Dussehra rally for which the Thackeray faction recently got permission from the Bombay High Court.
The decision by the party members comes as a bigger disappointment to the Thackeray faction as Aaditya Thackeray is the MLA in Mumbai’s Worli area.
The Maharashtra government split open in June when then-Shiv Sena MLA Eknath Shinde and 39 other rebel MLAs from Shiv Sena fled to Surat opposing the Maha Vikas Aghadi government. They were against the Shiv Sena forming an alliance with the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and the Congress.
After days of political turmoil in the state, Uddhav Thackeray resigned as Maharashtra Chief Minister and his post was taken up by Eknath Shinde with Devendra Fadnavis as his deputy.
Since then, the two sides have been at loggerheads over which faction is the “legitimate” Shiv Sena. Recently, the two factions have been caught up in a courtroom drama over who will host the party’s annual Dussehra rally.
The two factions had submitted separate letters to the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) to conduct the rally. However, the Mumbai civic body denied permission to both factions, citing law and order concerns.
The very next day after the civic body denied permission, the Bombay High Court granted permission to the Uddhav Thackeray faction to hold a rally between October 2 and October 6.
