Heena Sharma Blog

  The Shiv Sena on Monday slammed BJP leaders Devendra Fadnavis and Pravin Darekar for objecting to Mumbai police's grilling of a pharma firm's top executive over alleged stocking of Remdesivir vials , and wondered if there was a conspiracy to disturb the law and health order. An editorial in the Sena mouthpiece 'Saamana' accused the BJP of having a clear agenda that the Maharashtra government should fail in handling the COVID-19 situation , and charged it with making persistent efforts in that direction with the help of the Centre. It said the Maharashtra government and the opposition should be unanimous at least on the issue of saving lives of people and no one should seek political mileage out of pyres of people dying for want of the drug, which is in high demand for treating COVID-19 patients. Mumbai police questioned a pharma company director on Saturday following information that thousands of vials of Remdesivir were to be flown out of the country, despite a...

Maharashtra Health Minister Rajesh Tope on Wednesday asked people not to panic over Centre's health team projections about a surge of Covid-19 cases in Mumbai, stating that the number of hot spots in the state had reduced to five from 14. He also said that the rate of doubling of cases in the state had improved to 7.01 days from 3.1 days earlier this month. "There is no need to panic over the central government's team projections that Mumbai might have 42,604 cases by April 30 and 6.50 lakh patients by May 15," Tope said in an online address to people. Read More

Shiv Sena leader Sanjay Raut on Monday said NCP chief Sharad Pawar's name should be considered by all political parties for the 2022 presidential election. Raut also claimed that by 2022, there will be enough numbers "on our side" to decide the presidential candidate. Pawar recently played a key role in bringing together the Congress and the Shiv Sena to form government in alliance with his party in Maharashtra. Talking to PTI, Raut said, "Sharad Pawar is a senior leader of the country. I think his name should be considered by all political parties for the post of President, the election for which will be held in 2022." Asked about the opinion of other political parties on fielding the former Union minister and four-time state chief minister, Raut said he has "merely proposed" Pawar's name. "I think other political parties can also propose other senior candidates for the post of President. By 2022, there will be enough numbers...

Ahead of the tabling of the Citizenship Amendment Bill in Lok Sabha on Monday, the Shiv Sena has questioned whether "selective acceptance" of Hindu illegal immigrants will act as a trigger for a religious war in the country and accused the Centre of apparently doing an "invisible partition" of Hindus and Muslims over the bill. The Uddhav Thackeray-led party also said "vote bank politics" under the garb of the bill (CAB) is not in the interest of the country. In an editorial in the party mouthpiece 'Saamana', the Sena also raised the timing of the bill saying, "There is no dearth of problems in India now but still we are inviting new ones such as CAB. It looks like the Centre has made an invisible partition of Hindus and Muslims over the bill". The Sena, which has 18 MPs in the Lok Sabha, also pointed out that most of the states from the North East region have opposed the CAB along with Bihar where the BJP is sharing power with...

Shiv Sena president Uddhav Thackeray will on Thursday evening join the league of seven leaders who got the chief minister's post in Maharashtra when they were still not member of either the state Legislative Assembly or Council. Congress leaders A R Antulay, Vasantdada Patil, Shivajirao Nilangekar-Patil, Shankarrao Chavan, Sushilkumar Shinde and Prithviraj Chavan are among the leaders who were not members of any of the state legislature Houses when they occupied the top post. The then Congress leader and current NCP chief Sharad Pawar also finds name among these leaders. Thackeray, 59, to be sworn in as chief minister at the Shivaji Park here on Thursday evening, will become the eighth such leader. According to provisions of the Constitution, any leader who is not a member of the Assembly or Council has to become member of the legislature within six months of taking oath of the post. Antulay became the first such leader in the state when he was sworn in as the chi...

Shiv Sena president Uddhav Thackeray will take oath as chief minister of Maharashtra on Thursday evening at the Shivaji Park here. With the swearing-in of 59-year-old Thackeray, the state will have a chief minister from the Sena after 20 years. The oath taking ceremony will be held at the sprawling Shivaji Park, where his father and Sena founder Bal Thackeray addressed his famous Dussehra rallies. The last Sena man to occupy the chief minister's chair was Narayan Rane in 1999, after Manohar Joshi, who in 1995 became the first CM from the party. The swearing-in ceremony follows days of dramatic political developments, which included a three-day government formed by an unexpected support from NCP leader Ajit Pawar, who has since returned to the Sharad Pawar-led party fold. The Sena, along with the NCP and Congress constituted the 'Maha Vikas Aghadi' to form a non-BJP government in the state. Read More

The BJP on Wednesday took potshots at former ally Shiv Sena’s attempts, asking it how it planned to fit its ‘ Hindutva ’ ideology, which the two share, in the common minimum programme (CMP) it is trying to sew up with ideological opponents, NCP and Congress. “ It is up to the Shiv Sena how to fit their ‘Hindutva’ agenda in the CMP with the Congress,” senior BJP leader and Union minister Raosaheb Danve said. “The Congress, which is a 150-year-old party, will obviously take its agenda further (in government),” he said. ‘ Hindutva’ has been the Sena’s ideological leitmotif, and the glue that made BJP and Sena stick together for over 30 years. Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray had responded to a similar question at his press conference on Tuesday evening. He said he was collecting information on how the BJP struck alliances with such ideologically distinct parties as the Peoples’ Democratic Party, Janata Dal (United), Lok Janshakti Party, and Telugu Desam Party. Read More

The NCP on Wednesday named its five members for a joint committee to be formed with the Congress for deciding a 'common minimum programme' before their possible alliance with the Shiv Sena for government formation in Maharashtra. NCP's legislature party head Ajit Pawar, its Maharashtra chief Jayant Patil, party veteran Chhagan Bhujbal, Mumbai unit president Nawab Malik and Leader of the Opposition in state Legislative Council Dhananjay Munde will be part of the committee. The decision was taken at a meeting of NCP legislators at the Y B Chavan Centre here on Wednesday. "The NCP has named the leaders to be part of the joint committee. The Congress will also name its members for the purpose," said a leader of the Sharad Pawar-led party. The panel is being formed after NCP chief Sharad Pawar and senior Congress leader Ahmed Patel met here on Tuesday and expressed the need to have a common minimum programme (CMP) before working out the possibility of ty...

President Ram Nath Kovind on Tuesday accepted the resignation of Shiv Sena MP Arvind Sawant from the Union council of ministers with immediate effect, a Rashtrapati Bhavan spokesperson said. Sawant's resignation has been accepted on advice of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, according to the spokesperson. As advised by the prime minister, the president has directed that Union minister Prakash Javadekar be assigned the charge of the Ministry of Heavy Industries and Public Enterprises in addition to his existing portfolios, the spokesperson added. Read More

Few parties manage to stay relevant through a generational change. Shiv Sena is the exception. When it was formed, its founder Bal Thackeray saw it as forum to arouse the Maharashtrian-ness of those who lived in the state, making the Mangalorean, the North Indian, the Tamil, Telugu, and the Malayali the ‘other’. The Communists and the Congress were also targets of Marmik, a cartoon magazine Thackeray founded that poked fun at the outsiders and the meek Maharashtrians. It also gave an ideological cover for breaking the Communist-dominated trade unions in and around Mumbai's textile mills. But he soon found that the ‘Maharashtra for Maharashtrians’ slogan had limited appeal outside Mumbai where non-Maharashtrians were seen as performing an economic service and not necessarily as a threat. A change of track followed with Sena supporters becoming the vanguard of the Hindu movement, speeding ahead of the BJP. Later, owing to the efforts of BJP leader Pramod Mahajan, an agreeme...