Former Maharashtra Minister and Uddhav Thackeray faction leader Subhash Desai’s son Bhushan Desai joined Shiv Sena led by Chief Minister Eknath Shinde on Monday.
Bhushan Desai joined the Shinde faction in presence of the chief minister.
Addressing the media persons after Desai’s joining the party, Chief Minister Shinde said, “Since the beginning of our revolt, many staunch leaders who worked with Balasaheb Thackeray came with us.”
He said the party is working on Balasaheb Thackeray’s ideology and working towards the welfare of the common man. “Keeping that in mind, Bhushan Desai has decided to work with us and joined our party,” Shinde said.
On the occasion, Bhushan Desai said, “Balasaheb Thackeray is my idol. Currently, Chief minister Eknath Shinde is carrying the legacy of Hindutva which was started by Balasaheb Thackeray.”
Bhushan Desai said he has seen Eknath Shinde’s work closely hence he decided to join Shiv Sena led by Chief minister Eknath Shinde.
Earlier on February 17, in a major setback to the Uddhav Thackery faction of Shiv Sena, the Election Commission of India (ECI) allotted the party name “Shiv Sena” and the symbol “Bow and Arrow” to the faction led by Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde.
While the Shinde faction welcomed the decision of being recognized as the real Shiv Sena, the Uddhav Thackeray faction said they will move to the Supreme Court.
The Commission observed in its order that the current constitution of the Shiv Sena party is undemocratic and has been “mutilated to undemocratically appoint people from a coterie as office bearers without any election at all”. It said such party structures fail to inspire confidence.
The poll panel advised all political parties to reflect democratic ethos and principles of inner party democracy and regularly disclose on their respective websites aspects of their inner party functioning, such as organisational details, holding of elections, the copy of the Constitution and list of office bearers.
“The constitution of political parties ought to provide for free, fair and transparent elections to the posts of office bearers and a further free and fair procedure for the resolution of internal disputes. These procedures ought to be difficult to amend and should be amendable only after ensuring larger support of the organisational members for the same,” the ECI said.
Last month, both the Maharashtra Chief Minister Shinde and former CM Uddhav Thackeray-led factions of the Shiv Sena submitted their written statements in support of their claims over the party name and symbol to the Election Commission.
The ECI had frozen the bow and arrow symbol of the Shiv Sena and had allotted the ‘Two Swords and Shield symbol’ to the Eknath Shinde faction of Shiv Sena and the ‘flaming torch’ (mashaal) election symbol was allotted to the Uddhav Thackeray faction for the bypoll in Andheri East assembly constituency in November last year.
Shiv Sena had seen a split last year forcing Uddhav Thackeray to resign as Chief Minister of the Maha Vikas Aghadi government. Shinde later joined hands with BJP to form a government in the state.
