MUMBAI: Struggling to retain his partymen, Shiv Sena (UBT) chief Uddhav Thackeray on Sunday received yet another jolt as party secretary Sanjay Lakhe-Patil resigned, accusing Thackeray of not keeping his promise of giving him the Jalna seat in the Lok Sabha elections. Bhaskar Jadhav, group leader in the assembly, also expressed his displeasure, saying he wanted to retire, as he was upset about not being allowed to complete his speech in the party’s Foundation Day function.
Lakhe-Patil, a Congressman who joined Thackeray in March 2024 just before the Lok Sabha polls, was given the important post of party secretary in August 2024. However, he wanted more, and blamed Ambadas Danve for ceding the Jalna seat to the Congress. “Danve nowadays is getting admiration from the party leadership for his anti-government protests across Marathwada. But he stole that idea from me,” he said. Danve, when contacted, said that the party leadership decided seat-sharing formulae, and he did not want to comment on Lakhe-Patil. Lakhe-Patil also claimed that Sanjay Raut had compromised the party’s interest by claiming the Sangli Lok Sabha seat, which he lost badly.
The other disenchanted Sena (UBT) leader, Bhaskar Jadhav, declared that leaving the NCP to join Thackeray in 2019 was a mistake, and expressed his unhappiness about not getting a cabinet minister’s post in the MVA government. According to party insiders, Jadhav was upset about not being allowed to complete his speech at the Party Foundation Day function.
Sanjay Raut, however, said that Jadhav was not upset. “He has just expressed his feelings and Uddhav Thackeray will discuss the matter with him,” he said. “One needs to understand that the party leadership gave Jadhav an opportunity to speak on Party Foundation Day, which is an honour.”
After Raut’s statement, Jadhav responded that he had the maturity to understand that this was an honour. “I am a grounded person and do not have any misconceptions about myself,” he said. “But I think that I should have been made a minister in the MVA government. I still feel that leaving Sharad Pawar was a mistake but I want to make it clear that I do not regret it.”
With hundreds of his local leaders and former corporators having defected to the Shinde Sena and BJP, Thackeray on Friday held separate meetings of local leaders from all districts and organised dinner meetings with MPs and MLAs and urged them not to succumb to pressure from “anti-Maharashtra” parties.