The Indian Panorama

Tag: Eknath Shinde

  • Fadnavis Returns as Maharashtra Chief Minister for a Third Term

    Fadnavis Returns as Maharashtra Chief Minister for a Third Term

    Shinde, Pawar take oath as Deputy Chief Minister; Cabinet expansion next week

    MUMBAI (TIP): BJP legislature party leader Devendra Fadnavis on Thursday, December 5, took the oath as the Chief Minister of Maharashtra, while leaders of the BJP-led Mahayuti alliance, Eknath Shinde and Ajit Pawar, were sworn in as Deputy Chief Ministers at a grand ceremony in south Mumbai’s Azad Maidan.

    Fadnavis included the names of his mother and father while taking the oath. “I Devendra Sarita Gangadharrao Fadnavis do swear in the name of God…,” said the 54-year-old to thunderous applause as Governor CP Radhakrishnan administered him the oath of office and secrecy in the presence of PM Narendra Modi, senior NDA leaders and chief ministers of BJP-ruled states.

    A sulking Eknath Shinde was reportedly reluctant to take the deputy CM’s post. Shiv Sena’s Uday Samant said Shinde relented after Fadnavis requested him to join his team
    Another Sena leader said Shinde agreed to accept the post after all party MLAs met him & persuaded him to do so.
    This is the third time as CM for Fadnavis and the sixth time as Deputy CM for Pawar. After Fadnavis, Shinde of the Shiv Sena and NCP’s Pawar also included the names of their mothers while taking the oath. While Shinde took the oath as Eknath Gangubai Sambaji Shinde, Pawar called himself Ajit Ashatai Anantrao Pawar.

    The politically significant move by the CM and his deputies signals solidarity with women, who, NDA leaders say, voted generously in their favor, helping the Mahayuti alliance return to power with a massive four-fifths majority (230 seats in a 288-member House). Fadnavis, Shinde and Pawar have repeatedly acknowledged the contribution of the Ladli Bahin scheme to their massive win in the Assembly elections in which the Congress, Shiv Sena-UBT and NCP-Sharadchandra Pawar were literally routed.

    “The inclusion of the names of mothers along with fathers in the middle names of the CM and his deputies is a strong message of equality and solidarity with women. That is the commitment of the BJP, especially of PM Modi,” said a senior BJP leader.

    Soon after the swearing-in, the CM and his deputies drove to the Maharashtra Secretariat for the first Cabinet meeting, which recommended to the Governor to call the Assembly session for MLAs’ oath from December 7 to 9. The election of the Speaker will be held on the last day of the session. The Cabinet expansion will take place next week, sources said.

    Before chairing the Cabinet meeting, Fadnavis signed a file granting Rs 5 lakh aid to a patient awaiting bone marrow transplant.

    Meanwhile, the ruling Mahayuti’s rivals, NCP’s Sharad Pawar and Shiv Sena-UBT’s Uddhav Thackeray, although invited, skipped the ceremony.

    Present at the event were senior NDA leaders, including Amit Shah, Rajnath Singh, Nirmala Sitharaman, Nitin Gadkari, N Chandrababu Naidu, Nitish Kumar, JP Nadda, Bhupender Yadav, Shivraj Singh Chouhan, Jyotiraditya Scindia and Chirag Paswan.

    The CM’s of BJP-ruled states who attended the event included Yogi Adityanath, Pramod Sawant, Pushkar Singh Dhami, Nayab Singh Saini and Mohan Majhi. Among celebrity guests were Mukesh Ambani, Sachin Tendulkar, Salman Khan and Shah Rukh Khan.
    (With inputs from agencies)

  • Actor Govinda joins CM Eknath Shinde’s Shiv Sena

    Actor Govinda joins CM Eknath Shinde’s Shiv Sena

    Bollywood actor Govinda made a political comeback on Thursday, March 28, after joining the ruling Shiv Sena in the presence of Maharashtra CM Eknath Shinde in Mumbai. The actor had earlier won elections on a Congress ticket from the Virar constituency after defeating BJP stalwart Ram Naik.
    The ‘Raja Babu’ actor made his political debut in 2004 when he emerged as a “giant killer” after defeating senior BJP leader Ram Naik in the Mumbai North Lok Sabha seat with a Congress party ticket. The 60-year-old actor was welcomed by Maharashtra CM Eknath Shinde saying he was a popular figure in all sections of the society.
    “I am back (in politics) after a 14-year-long ‘vanvas’ (exile),” Govinda remarked after joining the Shiv Sena. The actor said he would work in the art and culture field if given a chance.
    Applauding the work done by the central government under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s leadership, Govinda, fondly called Chi Chi, said, “We have seen the same level of progress here (in Maharashtra) in the last two years, as we have seen in the country in the last 10 years. We will focus on the beautification of the state and the growth of art and culture.”
    Govinda, who started his acting career in the 1980s, said after his first stint in politics from 2004 to 2009, he never felt he would come back to the same field.

  • The Speaker’s court: On the Maharashtra Assembly Speaker’s ruling

    Maharashtra example shows why power to disqualify should be in independent hands

    The Maharashtra Assembly Speaker Rahul Narwekar’s ruling on the disqualification petitions filed by rival factions of the Shiv Sena demonstrates why the adjudicatory function under the anti-defection law should not be in the hands of Presiding Officers in the legislature. In a matter that many thought would decide the survival of the Eknath Shinde regime, the Speaker has ruled that there was no case to disqualify members of the Eknath Shinde faction, or 14 members in the Uddhav B. Thackeray (UBT) group. The ruling is based mainly on the finding that loyalists of Eknath Shinde, the Chief Minister now, constituted the ‘real political party’ when rival Shiv Sena factions emerged on June 21, 2022. Mr. Narwekar’s verdict conveniently draws upon some aspects of the Supreme Court’s final verdict of May 11, 2023, in which a Constitution Bench ruled that the Governor was wrong in asking the then Chief Minister, Uddhav Thackeray, to undergo a floor test and that the Speaker was wrong in recognizing the Shinde faction’s appointee as the party’s whip. In contrast to the Court ruling, the Speaker has declared that Sunil Prabhu, an appointee of the UBT faction, ‘ceased to be the duly authorized whip’ from June 21, 2022, and that Bharat Gogawale of the Shinde group was “validly appointed” as the whip. As a result, Mr. Narwekar found no reason to sustain the charge that the Shinde loyalists violated any whip. He also ruled that there was no proof that the UBT group violated the other side’s whip as no such whip was served on them.

    The Uddhav Thackeray group may approach the Supreme Court again, possibly on the ground that the Speaker’s ruling contradicts key conclusions of the Bench. While acknowledging the split in the Shiv Sena Legislature Party, the Court had said: “… no faction or group can argue that they constitute the original political party as a defence against disqualification on the ground of defection”. The Speaker has also referred to the Shinde faction’s “overwhelming majority” (37 out of 55 MLAs of the original party). On the other hand, the Court had observed that the percentage of members in each faction is irrelevant to the determination whether a defence to disqualification is made out. However, the Court had conceded that the Speaker may have to decide on which faction is the real party when adjudicating a question of defection. It favored reliance on a version of the party constitution and leadership structure submitted to the Election Commission before rival groups emerged. It is these observations that the Speaker has utilized to determine which group is the real party. As long as defection disputes are in the hands of Speakers, and not any independent authority, political considerations will undoubtedly cast a shadow on such rulings.

    (The Hindu)

  • Maharashtra Governor’s decision to call floor test wrong: Supreme Court of India

    Maharashtra Governor’s decision to call floor test wrong: Supreme Court of India

    NEW DELHI (TIP): The Supreme Court of India, in a unanimous judgment, effectively opened the doors for disqualification proceedings against Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde for defection from the Shiv Sena and held that the then Governor Bhagat Singh Koshyari “erred” in calling for a trust vote, which triggered the fall of the Uddhav Thackeray-led Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government in mid-2022.

    The court also said that Governor Koshyari was right in inviting Mr. Shinde to form the new government as Mr. Thackeray had resigned before the floor test. This means that the Shinde government will continue in power for now.

    “The Governor had no objective material on the basis of which he could doubt the confidence of the incumbent government… Floor test cannot be used as a means to settle differences within a political party… The Governor erred in concluding that Mr. Thackeray had lost support… The discretion to call for a floor test is not an unfettered discretion,” a Constitution Bench led by Chief Justice D.Y. Chandrachud observed.

    The court said that it could not quash the voluntary resignation of Mr. Thackeray as CM, and thus reinstate his MVA government. “Had Mr. Thackeray refrained from resigning from the post of the Chief Minister, this court could have considered the grant of the remedy of reinstating the government headed by him,” it said.

  • Eknath Shinde: From auto-rickshaw driver to Maharashtra chief minister

    Eknath Shinde: From auto-rickshaw driver to Maharashtra chief minister

    Eknath Sambhaji Shinde, who on Thursday, June 30,  became the 20th Chief Minister of Maharashtra, once drove auto-rickshaw to earn a living before rising as a formidable Shiv Sena leader.The 58-year-old leader who hails from western Maharashtra’s Satara district shifted to Thane, a Sena bastion adjacent to Mumbai, in his young days and started his political career in the same city. The four-time MLA, who held the urban development and PWD portfolios in the previous Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government led by Uddhav Thackeray, never hid his humble origins. On the contrary, he made it a point to mention it to underscore how he has been indebted to the Shiv Sena and its founder, late Bal Thackeray for his rise in Maharashtra politics.

    Born on February 9, 1964, Shinde dropped out of college before completing graduation. After moving to Thane, he soon found his calling as one among thousands of Shiv Sena cadres who were ever-ready to hit the streets at the command of Bal Thackeray. Thackeray formed Shiv Sena in 1966 as a party fighting for the rights of the ‘sons-of-the-soil’ Marathi-speakers, and later aggressively championed the cause of `Hindutva’. As Shinde joined the Sena in Thane, he found a mentor in local party stalwart Anand Dighe. He became Dighe’s deputy and strengthened the party in Thane-Palghar region after Dighe’s sudden death in 2001. The sitting MLA from Kopri-Pachpakhadi in Thane city, Shinde was once a quintessential Shiv Sena street-fighter. He faces dozens of criminal cases for charges such as `voluntarily causing hurt by dangerous weapons’ and rioting, registered during various party agitations. He became a corporator in the Thane Municipal Corporation in 1997 and won his maiden Assembly election in 2004. In 2005 he was made the Sena’s Thane district chief.

    Currently he is in his fourth term as an MLA, while his son Dr Shrikant Shinde is the Lok Sabha MP from Kalyan in the district.

    Shinde was appointed the Leader of Opposition in the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly for a brief period in 2014 when the Sena initially refused to join the Devendra Fadnavis cabinet. The party later joined the BJP-led government, and Shinde became a cabinet minister. His closeness to Chief Minister Fadnavis set tongues wagging. It was also noted that the BJP contested elections to all civic bodies in Maharashtra in 2016 against the alliance partner Shiv Sena, except in Thane, Shinde’s home turf. When the Shiv Sena snapped ties with the BJP, and Sena president Uddhav Thackeray became chief minister of the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government with the NCP and Congress as allies after the 2019 elections, Shinde became a cabinet minister for the second time. During the COVID-19 pandemic, despite the NCP handling the health ministry, it was Shinde-controlled Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation that set up healthcare centres in Mumbai and its satellite cities to treat coronavirus patients. His closeness to Fadnavis apparently made the Sena leadership suspicious. Shinde was made guardian minister of the Naxal-hit Gadchiroli district (along with Thane), which was seen as a put-down. Shinde, however, remained a key Sena leader, as he had developed a strong support base of his own. He is known to be always accessible to party workers and colleagues, and visits the homes of ordinary party workers often. After managing to take away majority of Sena MLAs with him and becoming chief minister, Shinde’s next challenge would be to wrest control the party organization from Uddhav Thackeray and his loyalists.

    Eknath Shinde Political career

    –           Anand Dighe, President of Thane Shivsena, introduced Shinde to politics in early 1980. Shinde took over Dighe’s legacy after he died in 2001. Since 2004, he has served in the Legislative Assembly for four consecutive terms.

    –           1997: First elected to Thane Municipal Corporation as a corporator.

    –           2001: Elected to the post of Thane Municipal Corporation’s House Leader.

    –           2002: Elected for the second time to Thane Municipal Corporation.

    –           2004: First elected to the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly.

    –           Shiv Sena Thane district head appointed in 2005. First MLA in the party to be appointed to such a coveted position

    –           2009: Elected for the second time to the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly.

    –           2014: Elected for the third time to the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly.

    –           From October to December 2014, he was the leader of the opposition in the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly.

    –           Cabinet Minister of Public Works (PU) in the Maharashtra State Government from 2014 to 2019.

    –           Thane District Guardian Minister from 2014 to 2019.

    –           Appointed Shiv Sena Party Leader in 2018.

    –           Cabinet Minister of Public Health and Family Welfare (Marathi: ) in the Maharashtra State Government in 2019.

    –           2019: Elected to the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly for the fourth time on November 28th. 2019: Appointed as Cabinet Minister under Maha-Vikas-Aghadi, led by Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray.

    –           Appointed Minister of Urban Development and Public Works (Public Undertakings) in 2019.

    –           2019: Appointed Acting Minister of Home Affairs (28 November 2019 – 30 December 2019).

    –           2020: Appointed Thane district guardian minister.