Mumbai: Former Maharashtra chief minister Uddhav Thackeray, while smarting over the rebellion of Eknath Shinde, seems to have made peace with the very first Shiv Sena rebel, Chhagan Bhujbal, who walked out of the party in 1991 to join the Congress and eventually became a founding member of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP).
In June, Shinde toppled the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government — which comprised of the Shiv Sena, the Congress and the NCP — and became the chief minister with help of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
On Thursday, Thackeray attended Bhujbal’s 75th birthday celebration as a chief guest. The NCP put up a grand show at Mumbai’s Shanmukhananda auditorium to mark the occasion, inviting leaders such as Rajasthan CM Ashok Gehlot and Jammu & Kashmir National Conference chief Farooq Abdullah, other than Thackeray.
NCP president Sharad Pawar, too, was present on the occasion.
The NCP released a book on Bhujbal’s life authored by senior journalist Vijay Samant and Shiv Sena spokesperson Harshal Pradhan.
Thackeray felicitated Bhujbal, considered to be among Maharashtra’s foremost Other Backward Classes (OBC) leaders, with a flower bouquet and a shawl.
Speaking at the event, Thackeray, whose faction is now called the Shiv Sena-Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray (UBT), acknowledged that Bhujbal’s departure in 1991 hurt the Shiv Sena because it was akin to “losing a family member”.
“When he [Bhujbal] left, he went alone. But when he came back, he returned with the entire NCP, and not just the NCP, but the Congress too,” Thackeray added, reiterating his commitment to the MVA alliance.
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‘Bhujbal should not have left’
Bhujbal should not have left the Shiv Sena and his rebellion came as a shock to the entire Thackeray family, the former Maharashtra chief minister said.
“It took us a long time to get over it. But, one good thing that you did was that you finished the enmity while Balasaheb was alive. You came home, met Balasaheb, and put the differences of opinion to an end,” Thackeray said, referring to a dinner meeting that Bhujbal had with Shiv Sena founder Bal Thackeray at Matoshree in 2009. Balasaheb passed away in 2012.
Very few people have the fortune of being mentored by two tall leaders such as Bal Thackeray and Sharad Pawar, but he (Bhujbal) “never misused their trust”, the Shiv Sena (UBT) chief added.
The first rebellion
Bhujbal was working as a vegetable vendor in Mumbai’s Crawford market in the 1960s when he joined the Shiv Sena, and eventually grew in the party to become Bal Thackeray’s blue-eyed boy.
He was elected as a Shiv Sena corporator in Mumbai in 1973, and in 1985 was the party’s lone representative in the Maharashtra assembly. Bhujbal had won on the ‘mashaal’ symbol, which is the Shiv Sena (UBT)’s symbol, till the Election Commission settles the dispute between Thackeray’s faction and the Shinde group on ‘who is the real Shiv Sena’.
Bhujbal’s relations with his party started souring after 1990, when the Shiv Sena bypassed him to nominate Manohar Joshi as the leader of the party’s legislative group. Bhujbal’s backing to the Mandal Commission’s reservation policy, which Bal Thackeray had decided to oppose, made things worse.
He eventually walked out of the Shiv Sena with a group of supporters in December 1991. Bhujbal had also drawn the ire of Shiv Sena leaders by getting Bal Thackeray arrested in 2000 in connection with his writings regarding the 1992-93 riots. Bhujbal was the deputy CM and the home minister of the NCP-Congress government at that time.
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)
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