Hours after he was ousted as Maharashtra chief minister, Uddhav Thackeray took a dig at his successor Eknath Shinde saying that a so-called Shiv Sainik was the chief minister.
"The BJP made a so-called Shiv Sainik a chief minister,” said Thackeray during a media interaction at the Shiv Sena Bhavan - in his first comments as a former CM.
The Shiv Sena president maintained that the BJP had gone back on its promise of a rotational CM’s post with the two saffron parties sharing the chair for two-and-a-half years each.
“About what happened yesterday, I had told (then BJP president and now Home Minister) Amit Shah earlier as well that there should be a Shiv Sena CM for two-and-a-half years and a BJP CM for two-and-a-half years… had this been the case, there should not have been a Maha Vikas Aghadi,” he said.
The Eknath Shinde-led rebel group of the party has been alleging that the “party leadership” had compromised with the ideals of Hindutva and made an alliance with the "ideologically opposite" NCP-Congress. Besides, they felt that the NCP-Congress were getting benefitted at the cost of the Shiv Sena.