Shiv Sena (UBT) chief Uddhav Thackeray said Shiv Sena’s UBT faction cannot be destroyed, calling it more than a political organisation, calling it an ideology and a symbol of the sons of the soil.
He made these comments while addressing party workers during the centenary celebrations of his father Balasaheb Thackeray and asserted that BJP’s efforts to dismantle Shiv Sena will fail.
He said, “Shiv Sena is not just a political party. And if BJP thinks that Shiv Sena will eliminate it, then you cannot eliminate Shiv Sena; you cannot destroy Shiv Sena because Shiv Sena is not a party; Shiv Sena is an ideology. Shiv Sena is the spark of the sons of the soil. And Shiv Sena is a torch burning in the hearts of the oppressed; you cannot extinguish it. You cannot extinguish it at all.”
The incident comes days after the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its Mahayuti allies won a landslide victory in Maharashtra’s municipal corporation elections, winning 25 out of 29 municipal corporations, including the prestigious Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC).
This marks a significant shift in power, ending the Thackeray family’s nearly three-decade-long dominance of the BMC. The Mahayuti alliance crossed the majority mark by winning 118 seats in the 227-member BMC. BJP emerged as the largest party with 89 seats. Shiv Sena (Eknath Shinde) won 29 seats.
Shiv Sena (UBT) led the opposition by winning 65 seats. Congress won 24 seats. AIMIM achieved remarkable success by winning 8 seats in Mumbai and 114 seats across the state; MNS won 6 seats.
On the other hand, Shiv Sena (UBT), contesting the elections in alliance with MNS, won 65 seats. UBT-led Shiv Sena got 7,17,736 votes, which is 13.13 percent of the total votes polled. MNS added 6 seats to the alliance with 74,946 votes and its vote share was 1.37 percent.
The Indian National Congress (INC) won 24 seats and received 2,42,646 votes, which is 4.44 percent of the total vote share.
Among other parties, All India Majlis-e-Ittehad-ul-Muslimeen (AIMIM) won 8 seats with 68,072 votes. Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) got 3 seats, Samajwadi Party got 2 seats and NCP (Sharadchandra Pawar) got 1 seat.