Dismissing rumours that PWD minister and former dissident Chhagan Bhujbal was on his way to join Shiv Sena, party president Uddhav Thackeray said those who had troubled late Sena chief Bal Thackeray would not be accepted in the party.
He was speaking on Monday at a function where Bhujbal's lieutenant in Vidarbha, Kishor Kanhere, joined Sena. Based in Nagpur, Kanhere was a functionary of Bhujbal's Mahatma Phule Samata Parishad, a front of the other backward classes (OBCs), especially the Mali (gardener) community to which Bhujbal belongs to.
"Those who had troubled Sena chief will not be accepted by Shiv Sainiks," said Uddhav. He added that Sena was intent on netting "good people" and that NCP's dissident legislator Deepak Kesarkar from Sawantwadi in Sindhudurg district would join the party in August. Kesarkar, who is at loggerheads with another Sena bugbear and former Shiv Sainik Narayan Rane, was instrumental in the defeat of his son and Congress MP Nilesh from the Ratnagiri-Sindhudurg Lok Sabha constituency.
Uddhav asked the state to act on reports that four youths from the state are believed to have joined ISIS militants in Iraq. He also questioned if the state's recent quotas in jobs and education for the dominant Marathas and the Muslim community would stand the legal test. "Congress is famous for such cheating," he alleged.
Bhujbal, a senior NCP leader, was an aggressive, dyed-in-wool Shiv Sainik, rising through the ranks as a shakha pramukh, corporator, Mumbai's mayor and, later, became the only Sena MLA in 1985 from the erstwhile Mazgaon constituency.
In the legislature, Bhujbal was known for his vociferous legislative interventions and was among the leaders who expanded the party outside its traditional Mumbai-Thane belt into the backward communities and rural areas.
In 1990, Thackeray Sr nominated Manohar Joshi, a Brahmin, as the leader of the opposition in the assembly, which is said to have riled Bhujbal, leading him to quit the party in 1991 with his supporters, claiming Sena's opposition to the Mandal commission report was the trigger. Thackeray Sr also launched his caustic barbs at Bhujbal, leading to an acerbic exchange of words with his former blue-eyed boy.
In the erstwhile Sena-BJP dispensation from 1995-99, Bhujbal, who was defeated by Bala Nandgaonkar (now with MNS) from Mazgaon, was the leader of the opposition in the state legislative council during which his official bungalow was attacked by Sainiks, and, later, the deputy chief minister, when Congress-NCP returned to power.
Bhujbal, who is said to be miffed in the Maratha-dominated NCP, was defeated from Nashik in the Lok Sabha polls by Sena's Hemant Godse.
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