Mumbai Once again Uddhav Thackeray has suffered a major setback in Maharashtra. The issue is of Panchayat elections. Maharashtra BJP president Chandrashekhar Bawankule has claimed that 274 candidates supported by his party and 41 candidates supported by Shiv Sena’s Eknath Shinde faction have won the election for the post of sarpanch. That is, a total of 315 candidates supported by Shinde-BJP faction have won the election. Elections were held on Sunday for 547 gram panchayats in 16 districts of Maharashtra. The average voter turnout in these elections was 76 per cent. In these elections, the parties support the candidates, but do not give election symbols. Votes were counted on Monday. Apart from Gram Panchayats, the elections of Sarpanchs were also done by the voters. In these elections, 62 candidates supported by NCP, 37 supported by Congress and only 12 candidates supported by Uddhav Thackeray faction are reported to have won.
Maharashtra BJP President Bawankule told the media how the wind is blowing in favor of BJP in the villages as well. This can be gauged from the fact that more than 270 sarpanches have been elected backed by the party. Whereas, there is also a large number of candidates supported by the CM Shinde faction. He said that out of all the sarpanchs who have won elections, more than 50 per cent of the candidates are supported by the BJP-Shinde faction. Bawankule said that these results of gram panchayats are proving that the people of Maharashtra trust the Shinde-Fadnavis government. Let us inform that Eknath Shinde along with 39 more MLAs broke ties with Uddhav Thackeray in June this year. He had accused Uddhav of dishonoring and forging a unilateral alliance with the Congress-NCP. This faction was supported by BJP.
This historic victory is the result of the welfare policies of the Shinde-Fadnavis government and the tireless efforts of the workers. Hearty congratulations to all the winning candidates.@BJP4Maharashtra @BJP4Mumbai pic.twitter.com/9R0r8D4h3i
— Shivprakash (@shivprakashbjp) September 19, 2022
The Shinde faction has also claimed itself to be the real Shiv Sena in the Election Commission. Eknath Shinde has demanded from the Election Commission to give Shiv Sena’s election symbol arrow and bow to himself. At the same time, Uddhav Thackeray is constantly saying that he is the real Shiv Sena. The battle between the two factions continues in the Supreme Court as well. The Uddhav Thackeray faction has applied in the Supreme Court to cancel the membership of all the MLAs of the Eknath Shinde faction. At the same time, the Shinde faction says that they separated only under the provisions of the anti-defection law and their membership cannot be cancelled.