Shiv Sena president and former Maharashtra chief minister Uddhav Thackeray received advice from Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader Ajit Pawar on Thursday that he would have kept his position if he had asked veteran politician Chhagan Bhujbal for help during the crisis that resulted from a rise up within the Sena.
Pawar, who served as Thackeray's deputy in the previous Maha Vikas Aghadi coalition government, claimed that Bhujbal, who is now the head of the NCP after switching sides from the Sena and Congress, would have been the best person to handle uprisings and that the Sena supremo should have gotten in touch with him when 15 of his party's MLAs, led by Eknath Shinde, broke away.
"I have now become shock-proof. But when Bhujbal left the Shiv Sena, I must admit that our family was in a state of shock. The anger (that was vented) was political. We could not digest it for a long time that one of our own family members had deserted us," As reported by a news source, Thackeray said.
He further added ''I wish my mother were there when you visited 'Matoshree' (the Thackeray residence) and resolved all differences with Balasaheb''. In the 1990s, Bhujbal—once a fiery Shiv Sena leader—left the Bal Thackeray-led Sena and joined the Congress. Later, when Pawar founded the NCP, he followed Pawar.