Eknath Shinde can forget about going back to farming in Satara for now. For that’s the vow he had taken if he were to fail in getting the 40 MLAs re-elected when they walked out with him to topple Uddhav Thackeray as CM in June 2022.
Not only has he kept his promise to his legislators, but has, once and for all, slayed the question of who is the true successor to Balasaheb’s legacy.
Even as BJP has emerged as the single largest party, more than double Shiv Sena’s numbers, Shinde will claim that he has as good a claim on the CM’s post as a BJP nominee because it was his idea of the Ladki Bahin scheme (to provide a stipend of Rs 1,500 every month to women aged 21 to 65) that’s widely perceived to be the game changer. Post LS polls setback, this scheme -that helped millions of women in rural Maharashtra gain agency over their lives -is widely credited for Saturday’s saffron tsunami.
These are, indeed, heady times for the humble Shiv Sainik from Thane who started out as an autorickshaw driver. Life has been tough for him. He lost a son and daughter to a drowning accident in a lake.
Groomed as a Sena functionary by s, but we Sena’s longtime Thane boss Anand Dighe, Shinde took over the mantle of leadership in that district from Dighe after the latter’s death in 2001. His rise was steady as he won four successive terms in the assembly from 2004 onwards, becoming PWD minister in the MVA govt. But it was the big coup he carried out by walking away with a majority of Sena MLAs in a massive revolt against Uddhav Thackeray’s leadership in mid-2022 – that too when Uddhav was CM – that marked him out as the most formidable Sainik rebel to date.
Shinde has described his rebellion against Udhav as his attempt to save Bal Thackeray’s Sena and the Sena founder’s legacy in the face of his son’s apparent abandonment of the Sena’s hardcore Hindutva ideology.
He has also consistently portrayed himself as an ordinary Sainik ‘bhakt’ of Balasaheb, empowered as CM but an activist at heart. His ‘activist’ credentials were strengthened in mid-2023 when he trekked a long distance in rain to reach the spot of the Irshalwadi landslide which had claimed several lives.
With his Sena making inroads into Mumbai, traditionally a bastion of Uddhav’s, his political career is going from strength to strength. With Saturday’s blockbuster showing nobody is questioning his motivations or actions, anymore.