Mumbai: With Aaditya Thackeray having been firmly in charge of the Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray)‘s activities in Mumbai, the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena has decided to fight the Thackeray scion with its own next-generation leader — Chief Minister Eknath Shinde’s son, Shrikant.
Shrikant is helming the party’s outreach programme with its shakhas, the Shakha Sampark Abhiyan. Shakhas are the Shiv Sena’s ground-level administrative unit and its first point of contact with people. Over the past week, Shrikant has been visiting shakhas, interacting with party workers and the local population and hearing out their grievances, Shiv Sena workers told ThePrint.
Shrikant, an MP from Maharashtra’s Kalyan, has also been meeting bureaucrats in Mumbai, taking up some of the grievances he hears on the shakha visits and other local issues in Mumbai — such as redevelopment of koliwadas (fishing villages) and beautification of parts of the city, among others.
Speaking to ThePrint, the Shinde scion said, “I am just trying to understand what problems party workers are facing, trying to connect with them, the local issues that people around those shakhas have. And I don’t just listen to them, I am also immediately following up on these issues with the concerned authorities to get them resolved.”
He added: “I don’t want to make comparisons with anyone”, referring to his former colleague Aaditya Thackeray’s work in Mumbai. “I can only say we are not big leaders whose faces you will see on billboards. We are in effect party workers on the ground.”
ThePrint reached Shiv Sena (UBT) MP and spokesperson Arvind Sawant on call and text message for comment, but received no response till the time of publication of this report. The copy will be updated once a response is received.
In June last year, Eknath Shinde had led a rebellion of Shiv Sena MLAs to cause a split in the party and topple the Uddhav Thackeray-led Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government, comprising the Thackeray-led Sena, the Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP). Shinde then formed his own government with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), taking over the reins as CM.
For Shinde, who had handled the affairs of the undivided Shiv Sena in Mumbai’s satellite town of Thane and its surrounding areas, Mumbai has been a weak link. His son Shrikant too has not extensively worked the ground in Mumbai before.
The focussed effort at expanding the party’s presence in Mumbai and projecting Shrikant Shinde as the party’s face in the city comes ahead of polls to the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), expected to be held anytime this year or early next year. The Mumbai civic body has been the bastion of the undivided Shiv Sena for 25 years.
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The Shakha Sampark Abhiyan
For decades, the undivided Shiv Sena ran an almost parallel administrative system through its shakhas. After the split, CM Shinde was faced with the challenge of setting up his own shakhas with the existing network of these units in Mumbai being mostly loyal to the Thackeray family.
Of the 40 Sena MLAs in the Shinde camp, only five are from Mumbai, and just a handful of the undivided Shiv Sena’s Mumbai corporators have shifted their allegiance to Shinde.
In this backdrop, the Shakha Sampark Abhiyan is also aimed at projecting how the Shinde-led Shiv Sena’s shakhas, and not the ones under Thackeray, are carrying the legacy of Shiv Sena founder Bal Thackeray forward.
The party, last week, released a teaser of the Shakha Sampark Abhiyan on its social media handles, talking about Bal Thackeray having started the legacy of shakhas as the centres of the party’s public welfare programmes and how Eknath Shinde is taking the concept forward.
Sheetal Mhatre, a senior leader from the Shinde-led Shiv Sena, told ThePrint that in the one year since the split, her party has been able to set up about a hundred shakhas across Mumbai, with there being at least two or more shakhas in most of the city’s 36 assembly constituencies.
“We have appointed shakha pramukhs (heads of the shakhas) everywhere and overall filled about 80 per cent of the administrative positions across all the hundred shakhas,” she said.
In comparison, the Shiv Sena (UBT) has one shakha in each of the 227 councillor wards in Mumbai.
Shrikant’s Mumbai push
According to the party, since the beginning of June, Shrikant has visited about 10 to 12 of his party’s shakhas in Mumbai, across areas such as Byculla, Bandra, Ghatkopar, Dahisar, Mahim and Prabhadevi.
“Shrikant Shinde ji spends about 1-1.5 hours at every shakha he visits, interacts with the shakha and upa shakha (deputy) pramukhs. He has been taking stock of what kind of work the shakhas are doing, gives his feedback on what needs improvement. This sends a strong message to all the karyakartas that the senior leadership is directly coming to meet them, listening to them,” Vijay Lipare, the Shinde-led Sena’s Vidhan Sabha sanghatak (administrator) in Byculla, told ThePrint.
He added: “It is true that Shrikant ji hasn’t worked in Mumbai prior to this, but he brings a lot of administrative acumen being an experienced MP. And this kind of a programme also helps popularise his leadership in the city.”
Following the split in the Shiv Sena, Aaditya Thackeray had taken up a similar shakha outreach campaign, personally visiting these small administrative units across the city and interacting with party workers.
Shrikant has also been having meetings with bureaucrats on various issues related to Mumbai, just the way Aaditya would hold meetings when he was a state cabinet minister in the previous MVA government.
In April, Shrikant met BMC Commissioner Iqbal Singh Chahal and senior civic officials to discuss pending works in the Marine Drive and Fort areas, aimed at protecting the heritage value of these areas and upgrading infrastructure to promote tourism.
On Tuesday, Shrikant held another meeting with Chahal and senior civic officials. He told ThePrint this meeting was mainly to discuss issues that he had come across during his shakha visits so far.
“I took up issues like repairs in transit camps of the slum rehabilitation authority, a proper policy with the state government for people living in transit accommodation for years, development of koliwadas. There is no point in simply listening to people’s grievances and not acting on them,” he added.
(Edited by Poulomi Banerjee)
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