Maharashtra: Sena Shakhas on Rise Amid Uddhav vs Shinde; Aaditya to Launch 3 Groups, Key Meet at 6pm

Shiv Sena’s Thackeray faction is in expansion mode now with three new Sena shakhas that will be inaugurated by Aaditya Thackeray in Bandra on Tuesday. There will also be a key Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) meeting held at 6 pm which Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray is expected to attend.

The new shakhas in the key constituency come even as CM Eknath Shinde’s camp have been launching parallel offices and shakhas. Earlier in August, Mahim MLA Sada Sarvankar announced a new headquarters for Shinde in Dadar, which many claimed would be a parallel Shiv Sena Bhavan. Following this, the Shinde faction opened its first shakha in Mankhurd, inaugurated by Rahul Shewale, rebel group leader in the Lok Sabha, as per a report by Mid-day.

Thackeray’s Sena has also been planning an organisational reshuffle in a bid to recover from the massive bleed the party was left with following the Eknath Shinde-led rebellion. While it lost power in Maharashtra, the Sena’s hold over the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), is also being challenged by the Shinde government.

The reshuffle will cover division chiefs (vibhag pramukhs), who are in charge of a constituency, lower-level functionaries like deputy division chiefs (upa-vibhag pramukhs), branch heads (shakha pramukhs) and deputy branch chiefs (upa-shakha pramukhs), as per a report by the Hindustan Times. It will also cover office bearers who may be replaced with fresher faces in a bid to infuse new vigour.

“The party may undertake an organisation reshuffle. Some vibhag pramukhs may have to make way for newer faces, followed by other functionaries like shakha pramukhs,” a senior Shiv Sena leader told Hindustan Times earlier this month. Some office-bearers had been occupying their positions for years, he added, which has led to stagnation in the organisation and a lack of upward mobility for a newer crop of leaders.

A rebellion by Shinde and 39 of 55 MLAs of the Shiv Sena led to the collapse of the Uddhav Thackeray-led Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government in June. After the collapse of the MVA government, Shinde was sworn in as the chief minister with the support of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Senior BJP leader Devendra Fadnavis is the Deputy Chief Minister in the new government.

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