Maharashtra Election Results 2024: Uddhav Thackeray had always maintained a soft-spoken, affable profile.
The Maha Vikas Aghadi's impending defeat in Maharashtra is expected to lie the heaviest on the shoulders of former Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray, who in a span of three years, not only lost power in the state and his party, but apparently, also the legacy of his father Balasaheb Thackeray. The rebel faction of Eknath Shinde, which accused Mr Thackeray of trading in his father's principles for power and pitched the electoral battle as a test of "Who is the real Shiv Sena", has lost no time to announce it as an ideological victory.
Chief Minister Eknath Shinde's son Shrikant Shinde was among the first to declare it so, with a swipe at Uddhav Thackeray. "Shiv Sena is not a private limited company... people have shown who is taking Balasaheb's ideals forward," said Shrikant Shinde, whose father had cited Mr Thackeray's alliance with the Congress and Sharad Pawar -- traditional rivals of the Sena -- to explain his rebellion in 2022.
His comments, though, struck an incongrous note, coming amid the declarations of the BJP - which, with an eye on the top post, attributed the victory to the ruling alliance's work on development and welfare and Prime Minister Narendra Modi's leadership.
PM Modi, however, had endorsed Eknath Shinde's stance that Mr Thackeray had turned away from the ideology laid down by his father for power. In the run-up to the election, he had called Mr Thackeray "Nakli Santaan (fake child)" of the Sena founder.
The Sena UBT chief had objected vehemently and was quick to declare that after such an insult, he would never be part of any alliance that includes the BJP. Amid BJP mockery that Rahul Gandhi had never accepted Bal Thackeray, he also retorted that the Congress leader had never "questioned his antecedents".
All this could now come back to haunt the Sena UBT chief as BJP supporters go on a rampage on social media.
Mr Thackeray's closest aide, Sanjay Raut, has been trolled since morning as the scale of the Mahayuti victory became clear and Election Commission showed Mr Shinde's Sena faction leading on 57 seats, compared to the 18 of the Uddhav Thackeray faction.
Alleging that money was used in the polls, Mr Raut, earlier today, had questioned how can "all MLAs of Chief Minister Eknath Shinde win. "How can Ajit Pawar, whose betrayal angered Maharashtra, win? I see a big conspiracy in this...This is not a mandate of Marathi 'manoos' and farmers... "We do not accept this as people's mandate. Something is fishy in the election results," he had added - comments for which he was savaged on social media.
The massive reverses for the Maha Vikas Aghadi come barely six months after the alliance's sparkling performance in the Lok Sabha election, which many said, had made clear the voters' disapproval of the political tumult of the last two years -- split in Shiv Sena followed by the collapse of the Uddhav Thackeray government, and the subsequent split in the Nationalist Congress Party of Sharad Pawar.
But in the intervening months, the ruling alliance had spruced up its show to wrest a spectacular victory -- one that ensures that the Maha Vikas Aghadi would manage to have very few seats even in the Rajya Sabha, practically dispatching them to political wilderness.
What the Loss Could Mean For Uddhav Thackeray
In the run-up to the election, Uddhav Thackeray, who had always maintained a soft-spoken, affable profile, had struck an aggressive note, and challenged the BJP's Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis. "Either You survive or I," the 64-year-old had thundered at an internal meeting of the party. his words may well prove prophetic, with Mr Fadnavis now being the front-runner for the state's top post.
But Mr Thackeray, despite his low-key stance, is known to defy expectation.
When Bal Thackeray died in 2012, many predicted an end of the road for the Shiv Sena. But Mr Thackeray had managed to hold the party together and transformed it into a mature political outfit from its earlier version of a party of street fighters.
In 2014, when the Shiv Sena and BJP parted ways to contest polls independently, Thackeray spearheaded his party's campaign to emerge as the second largest party in the state assembly after the BJP, but ended up joining hands with the BJP as latter formed government.
In 2019, he took the unexpected step of defying the BJP and snapping ties with it after claiming that the BJP had gone back on its promise of putting the Chief Minister post on rotational basis. Then he joined hands with the Congress and Sharad Pawar to form government and went on to head it.
But two-and-a-half years later, 61-year-old Thackeray's innings as chief minister came to an abrupt end after Eknath Shinde, backed by a chunk of MLAs, rebelled. Mr Thackeray had refused to back down. He had explained his alliance with the Congress and Sharad Pawar, arguing that his father had followed the all-embracing ideas of Hinduism, as opposed to the narrow definitions imposed by the right-wing today for political gains.
The background has pushed up the expectations of his party, who are now looking at him to lay out a fresh roadmap.