The street-fighting Sainik at the heart of the Maha political storm
MUMBAI: The Shiv Sena celebrated its 56th Foundation Day at a five-star hotel in Powai on June 19. It was a closed-door event attended by party functionaries, a few parliamentarians and Sena legislators and independents for whom the party had booked rooms in that hotel to prevent rival Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) from reaching out to any of them on the eve of the legislative council elections.
On the dais were six men flanking Maharashtra chief minister Uddhav Thackeray and his son and state minister Aaditya Thackeray. Urban development minister and guardian minister for Thane, Eknath Shinde was one of them. So was Sanjay Raut, newly re-elected to the Rajya Sabha, and industries minister Subhash Desai, Lok Sabha MP Gajanan Kirtikar and senior leader Diwakar Raote.
From a seat at the head table to fomenting rebellion in the ranks from a hotel in Surat, what compelled Eknath Shinde, 58, to take this drastic step?
Shinde’s rise from an auto-rickshaw driver in Thane to the urban development and public works (public undertakings) minister in the MVA government is the story of a passion-driven Sainik. The four-time MLA from Kopri Panchpakhadi constituency in Thane started his career as labour leader at Wagle Industrial Estate in the 1980s, and was at the forefront of all Sena agitations in those days. He soon caught the eye of charismatic Sena leader Anand Chintamani Dighe, aka Dighe saheb, or Dharmaveer Anand Dighe, who appointed him as a shakha pramukh in Thane.
Born on February 9, 1964 in a remote village in Satara’s Javali taluka, Shinde migrated to Thane in his formative years. He had to quit his formal education to meet ends meet after finishing Class 11. He drove an auto-rickshaw in the city and also did odd jobs.
In 2000, he lost his son Dipesh and daughter Shubhada in a drowning accident. His lone surviving son, Shrikant, is now an orthopaedic surgeon and a second-term MP from Kalyan.
The year 2000, one of great personal tragedy, was also a politically significant one for Shinde. To help his protégé overcome his personal tragedy, Anand Dighe, the Thane district unit chief at the time, made him leader of the house in Thane Municipal Corporation in 2001. This allowed Shinde to build his support base in Thane district, and the area that comprises present-day Palghar district.
When Dighe died of a heart attack following a road accident in August 2001, Shinde filled the vacuum left by his death. Three years later, he was elected to the state legislative assembly and gradually established his hold over the party organisation. Last year, he played a key role in the making of a film on Dighe. He told reporters at the time of its release in May that his mentor was a “mainstay of the Sena” and it was his personal mission to “spread [Dighe’s] ideas across the world”. Shinde even organised a special screening of the film for the CM
his family.
Sena street fighter to party troubleshooter
Like his mentor Dighe, Shinde is known among party workers for being indefatigable. He works round-the-clock. During the Covid-19 pandemic, Shinde was always on the ground, arranging medical aid and visiting Covid wards in a PPE kit. His team from the Shiv Sena medical aid unit also worked hard to ensure that patients got hospital beds or oxygen support. The groundswell of empathy he earns from other grassroots workers stood the
Sena in good stead back in 2005 when the party faced its first major defection. The then leader of Opposition Narayan Rane fell out with the Sena and joined the Congress. Rane’s men took on Shiv Sainiks in pitched battles on the streets of Mumbai. For the first time, Sena supporters were on the backfoot even as their famous slogan, “Avaaz Kunacha? (whose voice prevails?), Shiv Senecha (that of the Shiv Sena)”, formed the soundtrack to their “rada” (muscular) politics. Shinde, who cut his teeth as a Sena street-fighter in the 1980s, sent supporters from Thane to bolster the party in Mumbai.
The same year, Bal Thackeray’s nephew Raj quit the party and launched the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) in 2006. Once again, the Sainiks were split down the middle, but this only served to enhance Thackeray family’s dependence on Shinde. Unlike previous rebellions from erstwhile Sena leaders, Chhagan Bhujbal (now with the NCP) and Rane (now with the BJP), Shinde’s rebellion takes along with it a bulk of Sena’s legislative group. However, unlike the previous times no mass protests have marked Shinde’s move.
Claiming the Sena mantle
On May 14, at Uddhav Thackand first public rally in Mumbai after taking charge as CM, Shinde was one of the leaders who addressed thousands of Sena workers gathered at the Bandra Kurla Complex venue. In his address, he spoke at length about Bal Thackeray and the Hindutva ideology espoused by the Sena founder.
Yet, the Sena leadership in its characteristic style also tried to prop up factions against him, including one led by Thane MP Rajan Vichare and MLA Pratap Sarnaik. However, Shinde’s grassroots touch ensured that his writ over Thane ran unchallenged.
The Congress, in power between 2010 and 2014, offered Shinde a ministerial berth in exchange for his loyalties, an offer he reportedly turned down. In 2014, when son Shrikant was elected to Lok Sabha from Kalyan, the BJP sprang a surprise on the Sena and decided to contest the assembly polls on its own. It emerged as the single-largest party, and formed a government led by Devendra Fadnavis.
The Sena eventually joined forces with the BJP, and Shinde, who was the leader of Opposition for a brief period, became the minister for public works (public undertakings). At the same time, Shinde’s stint in the BJP-led government also brought Shinde close to Fadnavis. In 2017, when the Sena and the BJP fought the civic polls separately, the the BJP did not go all out to wrest the Thane civic body from Shinde. What’s more, Fadnavis reportedly proposed Shinde’s name as the Sena deputy CM, but the idea was shot down by the party leadership, which did not want to strengthen an alternate power centre. Shinde’s confidantes said that Uddhav Thackeray, who by then had entirely taken charge of the Shiv Sena following Bal Thackeray’s death in 2012, was wary of grassroots leaders due to their trouble-making potential, judging from the rebellions by Rane and even Chhagan Bhujbal who in 1991, quit the Sena in a surprise move.
This was perhaps Shinde’s first inkling that he had hit a ceiling in the party that he had joined and helped grow from the 1980s.
When the Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government came to power in 2019, any ambitions that Shinde may have had about a shot at the top job were crushed after Uddhav assumed charge of the CM’s post. His son Aaditya’s entry into electoral politics further drove the point home for Shinde, his supporters said.
Thackeray’s hands-off style of functioning, lack of command over the administration, inaccesseray’s ibility, as well ally NCP’s hold over the government often at the cost of the Sena’s interests, often led many Shiv Sena legislators to turn to Shinde. He became the principal trouble shooter for the party and as one Congress minister noted, a “Prati Mukhyamantri” or proxy chief minister.
At his two-storey bungalow in Louiswadi, equipped with a lift and a gym, a meeting room in the ground floor was kept only for his party work.
In 2020, upset over what he perceived as interference by Uddhav in his departments, Shinde organised a show of strength at Matoshri, the Thackeray family’s residence. Shinde is also said to have struck up an equation with Uddhav’s personal assistant Milind Narvekar, with whom he was at odds earlier.
His loyalists, however, were certain that Shinde would never leave the party. “Don’t forget where we come from. I will be laid to rest in the bhagwa (the Shiv Sena’s saffron flag),” he often told them. On Tuesday he tweeted, “We are Balasaheb Thackeray’s Shiv Sainik. Balasaheb has taught us Hindutva. We will not betray the ideals of Balasaheb and the teachings of Dharmveer Anand Dighe for the sake of power.” The old loyalist is now claiming the party’s mantle.