Shinde’s hole-up in Surat precursor to fourth mutiny in Shiv Sena?

Shiv Sena veteran Eknath Shinde gave quite a gift to the party for its 56th anniversary, when he walked away from the party with a group of MLAs to go camp in Surat. While this development has put the Shiv Sena in crisis mode, it also puts a question-mark on the stability of the Maha Vikas Aghadi coalition at the state helm.

Sources said that Shiv Sena leadership was trying to pacify Shinde, but as the situation is evolving, it seems to be reaching a point of no return.

But this is not the first time Shiv Sena faced rebellions; but this is the first time the crisis within the party must be taken care of by Shiv Sena President and Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray. There were three previous rebellions in the party—led by Chhagan Bhujbal, Narayan Rane and Raj Thackeray each—but were handled by the party founder Balasaheb Thackeray, who launched Shiv Sena on June 19, 1966.

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Bhujbal led the first rebellion in 1991, when he split from Shiv Sena, taking with him around a dozen Sena MLAs to the Congress, then led by Sharad Pawar in Maharashtra. In 1999, when Pawar founded Nationalist Congress Party, Bhujbal joined Pawar.

As a Shiv Sena member, Bhujbal held, among others, the position of Mayor of Mumbai.

Rane rebelled in 2005 against Uddhav, following which Balasaheb expelled Rane from the party. Rane was the chief minister of Maharashtra for a brief period, from February 1, 1999 – October 17, 1999, when Dr Manohar Joshi was removed from the post.

In the 1999 Vidhan Sabha elections, the saffron alliance of Shiv Sena and the Bharatiya Janata Party lost to see the Congress-NCP Democratic Front government coming to power for the next 15 years, till 2014. This coalition saw Chief Ministers—Vilasrao Deshmukh, Sushilkumar Shinde, Ashok Chavan and Prithviraj Chavan—and Rane became the Leader of Opposition till 2005, when he was expelled from Shiv Sena. During his tenure in the Opposition, he even attempted to topple the Congress-NCP government but failed.

Rane and Uddhav could never settle their political differences and it came to head in 2005, when Rane handed in his resignation, instead was expelled by Balasaheb.

Although Raj Thackeray’s rebellion wasn’t the most recent one, it was the most impactful as Raj was family—Balasaheb’s nephew. Even though he had proposed his cousin Uddhav’s name for Shiv Sena president in 2003 at the Mahabaleshwar conclave, he came out of the Shiv Sena fold in 2005 and founded the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena on March 9, 2006.

Since Balasaheb’s death on November 17, 2012, Uddhav has been at the helm of Shiv Sena, and Shinde going incommunicado is the biggest litmus test for Uddhav to keep peace within the party.