Mumbai: Maharashtra’s new chief minister Eknath Shinde, who finds himself in the peculiar position of leading a party-less faction, while claiming to be the ‘original’ Shiv Sena, has decided to set up his own Sena Bhavan in the heart of Mumbai, and in the vicinity of the real Sena Bhavan, which was built in the 1970s.
The Shiv Sena has an organic link with Dadar. It is where the party was born in 1966 at the Ranade Road residence of founder Bal Thackeray, and it is where the party’s headquarter ‘Shiv Sena Bhavan’ is located.
The Thackeray family too has an emotional connect with Dadar—its patriarch and Bal Thackeray’s father, the social reformer ‘Prabodhankar’ Keshav Sitaram Thackeray, a long-time resident of the precinct, had started celebrations of Navratri at Dadar in 1926 with Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar and ‘Raobahadur’ S.K. Bole. This marked the beginning of the public celebration of this festival in Maharashtra. The Thackeray siblings, including Shiv Sena president Uddhav Thackeray, were schooled at Balmohan Vidyamandir in Dadar.
Shinde, who claims to represent the ‘real’ Shiv Sena, even as the Supreme Court and the Election Commission of India (ECI) are still to deliberate on it, has asked his Mahim MLA Sada Sarvankar to scout for a new headquarter. A senior MP from the Shinde camp told Hindustan Times that they are looking at two or three locations, including a building across the existing Sena Bhavan, and adjoining it. A building located behind the sprawling Kohinoor Square was also considered for a while.
The headquarters of another Sena spinoff—the Raj Thackeray-led Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS)– is also located at Matoshri Towers in Dadar, not far from the Shiv Sena Bhavan.
In addition to a new headquarter to rival Sena Bhavan, the Shinde group is also setting up its own ‘shakhas’ to replicate the grassroots structure of the Shiv Sena. The shakhas, one in each municipal ward in Mumbai, is the framework on which the party organization rests. It allows for party leaders to connect with its core and auxiliary voters, especially those living in slums, chawls and lower and middle-income group housing.
These shakhas also facilitate the interaction between the party followers and the various arms of the administration like the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) and the police, and help create a solidarity between the Shiv Sena and the wider community. Mary Fainsod Katzenstein, the American political scientist and one of the earliest commentators on the Shiv Sena, has written about the importance of these shakhas, which organized activities that provided ‘concrete material incentives’ to party members. Eknath Shinde is replicating this shakha system to connect with the Sena’s core voters ahead of the BMC polls slated either for later this year or early 2023.
Sada Sarvankar promised that Shinde’s team will flex its muscle by building a shakha in each of Mumbai’s 227 wards in the coming months.
The first shakha was inaugurated last week at Maharashtra Nagar in Mankhurd by Rahul Shewale, the dissident Sena MP from Mumbai South Central. “We also plan to announce our own vibhag pramukhs (division chiefs) in Mumbai followed by the shakha pramukhs,” the Shinde loyalist said. The city has 11 vibhag pramukhs which is roughly two for each of the six Lok Sabha seats in Mumbai. These division chiefs play a significant role in the Shiv Sena—aspirants for nominations to assembly seats or the municipal elections must get their recommendation.