Eknath Shinde has become chief minister because of his 40 MLAs, says, Bharatshet Gogawale

Raigad MLA and chief whip of the Shiv Sena Bharat Gogawale  , has made startling claims about the "arm-twisting" tactics employed by some MLAs to become a minister.Gogawale claimed that while one MLA from Aurangabad demanded to be inducted into the cabinet saying that otherwise his wife had warned him of dying by suicide, another MLA from the Konkan region said if he was not made minister, then Union minister and BJP leader Narayan Rane would finish him off. Gogawale said that he saw Shinde was in trouble and hence he waited to be minister and let these two MLAs became ministers instead of him. Since the first cabinet expansion in August, Gogawale has been in the waiting list to become minister. He and MLA Sanjay Shirsat were in the first batch of MLAs who had joined Shinde when he launched the rebellion against Uddhav Thackeray in June 2022 and went to Surat, then Guwahati and Goa before coming back to Mumbai to form the government.

Gogawale has been aspiring to be minister since then and had also stitched a new suit to wear during the oath-taking ceremony. For the past one year, he has been expecting to be minister and on several occasions has been claiming that in the next cabinet expansion he will be made minister and that he will also be the guardian minister of Raigad district. However, he is yet to be inducted into the cabinet. During the cabinet expansion in July this year, while nine NCP MLAs led by Ajit Pawar took oath, none of the Shinde faction MLAs got a berth. Gogawale, considered to be close to Shinde, further said that Shinde is CM because of his 40 MLAs and he is CM on his own. After leading a rebellion against Uddhav Thackeray on June 21 last year, Shiv Sena leader Eknath Shinde managed to engineer a vertical split in the party, became the Chief Minister of the state and even received the recognition of the real ‘Shiv Sena’ for his faction, which received validation from the Election Commission of India earlier this year. However, Shinde is yet to build the organisational structure of the party in the state and has scores of challenges ahead of him, which would require of him to solve them to ensure his party stays in green pastures for a long time. While apart from a couple of cities and constituencies such as Thane, Kalyan and Navi Mumbai, the Shinde-led Sena still seems to be struggling to spread its wings at the grassroot level and establish the organisational structure of his faction as a political party. Moreover, the inclusion of Ajit Pawar's inclusion as deputy CM has far worsened the situation.