Took honest stand with intent to save Shiv Sena: CM Shinde on split

Mumbai, Jan 6 (PTI) Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde on Saturday said he rebelled against Uddhav Thackeray's leadership and split the Shiv Sena in June 2022 only to save the party.

Launching the campaign of the Sena faction led by him for the Lok Sabha elections at Rajgurunagar in Pune district at a `Shiv Sankalp' rally, he also defended his government's record on the investment front.

"I took the stand with honesty and with the intention of saving the party," said Shinde who toppled the Uddhav Thackeray-led coalition government of the Sena, Congress and NCP, and formed an alliance with the BJP to become chief minister.

Shiv Sena founder Bal Thackeray could have become Maharashtra's chief minister when the party came to power (in alliance with the BJP) for the first time in 1995, but he made another party worker (Manohar Joshi) chief minister instead, Shinde said.

"(Someone said) I have promised that I will make a Shiv Sena worker chief minister but then he himself became CM," Shinde said, taking a jibe at Uddhav Thackeray.

Thackeray, who broke off a decades-old alliance with the BJP in 2019 on the issue of the chief minister's post, had defended his decision by stating that he had promised his late father that a Sena worker would once again get the top post in the state.

Shinde, meanwhile, also responded to the criticism his government is facing over big-ticket projects going outside Maharashtra. Of Rs 1.37 lakh crore-worth investment deals signed at Davos last year, 85 per cent of the deals materialised, he claimed.

"In the preceding two-and-half years, Gujarat had overtaken Karnataka and Maharashtra, but in the last year and a half, we have regained the top rank," the chief minister said.

"Ab Ki Baar 45 Paar" (this time we will win more than 45 out of the 48 Lok Sabha seats in Maharashtra) will be the new slogan for Maharashtra. People have acknowledged the work done by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the results were seen in the assembly elections in four states," Shinde further said.

"Maharashtra is the first state in the country to provide crop insurance at one rupee....The decisions not taken in the last 50-60 years have been taken by the Modi government in the last nine years. The work of the `double-engine' government is in full swing and this is the reason (NCP leader) Ajit Pawar also joined us," he added. PTI