Five estranged netas return to Sena fold

In a détente in the relationship between the Shiv Sena and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), five corporators from the former party in Ahmednagar, who had joined the latter in the presence of Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar, returned to the former party fold on Wednesday.

On Saturday, five Shiv Sena corporators from the Parner Municipal Council had joined the NCP in Pawar ’s presence at Baramati. This had sparked off anger in the Shiv Sena, with former Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) from Parner Vijay Auti charging that the development was ‘serious’, as the DCM had lured men from the CM’s party. This had brought to the fore the contradictions in the ruling alliance, as the Shiv Sena and NCP share an overlapping area of influence, with one party being able to grow at the cost of the other. The two parties are also competitors in vast swathes of the state when it comes to local politics.

The defections had been engineered by NCP MLA Nilesh Lanke, a former Shiv Sainik, who joined the NCP on the eve of the state assembly elections, and defeated Auti, who was the deputy speaker of the state legislative assembly. Lanke claimed that the corporators were on their way to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Moreover, since the NCP and Shiv Sena were part of the ruling Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA), it meant that these corporators would stay in the same alliance.

The upset Shiv Sena leadership called on the NCP to ensure that its estranged corporators were back in the party fold. However, Shiv Sena Rajya Sabha Member of the Parliament (MP) and Saamna executive editor Sanjay Raut had absolved Ajit Pawar of involvement in any attempt to split the Sena.

The five, Mudassar Sayyad, Nandkumar Deshmukh, Kisan Gandhade, Vaishali Auti and Nanda Deshmane, returned to the Shiv Sena in presence of the CM and Shiv Sena president Uddhav Thackeray on Wednesday.