2024 is an important year for Maharashtra's politics and especially for Chief Minister Eknath Shinde. Lok Sabha elections are barely a few weeks away and state assembly elections are due for October this year. This will be first time Shinde, who rebelled against Shiv Sena (UBT) chief Uddhav Thackeray, will face key elections — a litmus test for Shinde camp.
While speaking to CNBC-TV18 in an exclusive interview, Shinde claimed that his party will pass these tests with flying colours as people care about those who work for them and not for "cry babies".
"People care about who worked for them, who built iconic projects for them and who worked for their overall well being. No one cares about cry babies. People do not care about those who are just sitting at home and crying. Who wants that? No one," the Chief Minister said.
Shinde said that there is absolutely no sympathy wave for Thackeray at all. "Our party has delivered on key projects like Atal Setu, coastal road, Samruddhi Mahamarg. Maharashtra tops the FDI list. Our Davos trip was extremely successful. Wherever I go, people talk about all this, not some sympathy wave," he added.
Shinde claimed that Shinde-BJP-Ajit Pawar alliance will perform tremendously in the Lok Sabha polls and will be voted back to power after Vidhan Sabha elections.
In June 2022, Shinde — a key leader of Shiv Sena (before split) took 15 MLAs with him and went to Gujarat. Later, more Sena MLAs joined him and they went to Guwahati. The rebels claimed that Thackeray betrayed Shiv Sena and Balasaheb Thackeray's ideology by joining hands with Congress to form Maha Vikas Aghadi. They also claimed that Sena MLAs were sidelined in the alliance and NCP and Congress MLAs were given priority for everything from project clearance in their respective constituencies to allotting funds.
Thackeray appealed to the rebels to return to the party but that did not help. Thackeray resigned, MVA collapsed and Shinde became the new chief minister of Maharashtra by joining hands with the Bharatiya Janata Party.
Since then, Thackeray group and other MVA leaders have been claiming that people of the state will not forgive Shinde for breaking up Shiv Sena. They claim that people will not forget Shinde's betrayal, there is a sympathy wave for Uddhav Thackeray and people will support him, a claim Shinde has continuously dismissed.
(Edited by : Priyanka Rathi)
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