LMOTY 2022: "We have shed our blood and sweat for the party": Eknath Shinde on his rebellion against Uddhav Thackeray

Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde on Tuesday at the Lokmat Maharashtrian of the Year' Awards  in his interview to actor Nana Patekar  said that his rebellion was not an act of "betrayal", but a "revolt." Speaking at the prestigious event, Shinde said, "The party in which we worked for so many years, we toiled hard, shed blood, and sweat worked tirelessly never paid heed to our request,  there was no guarantee whether we would reach home after work, still we did everything possible, even after doing all this, when something went wrong. we had to take the right to take decision as the party was  losing face and  we took thedecision to save the party, I see  there is nothing wrong, in it because our plea were falling into deaf ears. As result of Shinde's  actions, the Thackeray-led faction of the Shiv Sena has often targeted rebels as "traitors."

Shinde was in favor of breaking the Maha Vikas Aghadi and reestablishing alliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party.He requested Uddhav Thackeray to break the Maha Vikas Aghadi alliance due to ideological differences and unfair treatment by Congress Party and NCP.[24] His fellow Shiv Sena members said that their complaints were ignored by Uddhav Thackeray and Uddhav favored Congress Party and NCP over his own Shiv Sena members. Shinde gathered 2/3rd members from his party to support his request.The crisis began on 21 June 2022 when Shinde and several other MLAs of the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) coalition moved to Surat in BJP-governed Gujarat, throwing the coalition into a chaos.As a result of Shinde's revolt, Uddhav Thackeray resigned from the post of Chief Minister of Maharashtra and said that he will also resign from the Maharashtra Legislative Council. Shinde successfully reestablished alliance with BJP and was sworn in as the 20th Chief Minister, with Bharatiya Janata Party's Devendra Fadnavis as the Deputy Chief Minister.