Mumbai: A leader of Raj Thackeray’s Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) had arrived late for a meeting called by the party president’s son, Amit Thackeray, on two consecutive occasions. While the scion condoned his unpunctuality both times, the leader was last for the next meeting, too.
“This time, I got a rap in the typical Thackeray style, loaded with humour and satire,” said the leader, speaking about how 32-year-old Amit, viewed as Raj Thackeray’s successor by MNS workers, is quite like his father.
Amit, who has been closely involved in MNS’s operations since 2020, is now gearing up for his electoral debut in the Maharashtra assembly polls.
Despite the party’s dwindling political fortunes, leaders feel the young leader has strong chances of winning the seat that has been picked for him, Mahim, which the party has won once, in 2009.
With Amit’s entry into electoral politics, there will be two Thackerays in the fray—Amit and his cousin Aaditya Thackeray, a Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) leader and sitting MLA from Worli, who contested elections for the first time in 2019.
Their grandfather and Shiv Sena founder Bal Thackeray had always preferred to stay out of electoral politics, holding the “remote control” that ran the government instead.
The second generation, Bal Thackeray’s son Uddhav and nephew Raj, also preferred to stay out of electoral politics. Uddhav, however, became a member of the legislative council in 2020 after he took charge as the chief minister of Maharashtra in November 2019.
“The era of remote control ends with Rajsaheb. He will probably be the last person to run things that way. The kind of grip that he has on people and politics to run things through a remote control, I don’t. I know I will have to get into the system to make a difference,” Amit told reporters Wednesday.
Amit will take on incumbent MLA Sada Sarvankar of the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena, the ruling Mahayuti alliance’s candidate. Mahayuti comprises the Shinde’s Sena, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Ajit Pawar faction of Nationalist Congress Party (NCP).
From the rival Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA), comprising Shiv Sena (UBT), Congress and NCP (Sharadchandra Pawar), Mahesh Sawant of Shiv Sena (UBT) has been named the candidate.
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The Mahim constituency
Amit was one of the 45 names featured in MNS’s first candidate list for the assembly polls, released late Tuesday night.
In the triangular fight between Shiv Sena (UBT), Shinde’s Sena and MNS, all three consider the Mahim constituency, which houses the landmark Shivaji Park area in Dadar, their home turf.
In 2009, when MNS’s political fortunes were surging, the party had established dominance in the Mahim constituency over the then undivided Shiv Sena, which had contested elections in alliance with the BJP. Nitin Sardesai of MNS had won Mahim by a margin of 8,926 votes. The Congress finished in the second position, while the undivided Sena stood third. Overall, that year, 13 MLAs from MNS were elected.
In 2014, Sarvankar (Shiv Sena) won the seat, defeating Sardesai by 5,941 votes. The undivided Sena had contested solo then. The MNS’s tally also dropped from 13 MLAs to one.
The next time, in 2019, undivided Sena and BJP had contested the polls as allies, and Sarvankar comfortably won, defeating Sandeep Deshpande of MNS by 18,647 votes. Deshpande was in the second position. MNS secured just one victory again that year.
Speaking to media persons, Amit said that he knows the constituency like the back of his hand and understands the people’s issues there.
He added that while he will have a detailed vision plan for Mahim, the one issue that he feels strongly about and plans to focus on, if he is elected as the MLA, is cleaning up of the coastline. “I feel very dearly about the coastline that nature has given us. I want to clean it beyond people’s expectations and make it more pleasant than ever.”
On questions from reporters about how the same coastline runs into the neighbouring Worli constituency, represented by his cousin from Shiv Sena (UBT) Aaditya, Amit tartly said, “I will clean that, too.”
The rise of another Thackeray
Starting around 2005, Amit would be spotted campaigning for the MNS intermittently, but he formally entered mainstream politics only on 23 January, 2020—Bal Thackeray’s 94th birth anniversary.
His father Raj had walked out of Shiv Sena in 2005 after the party supremo picked his son Uddhav as his successor over Raj.
In 2020, the MNS had formed a ‘shadow cabinet’ to keep a check on the Uddhav Thackeray-led MVA government. While the shadow cabinet did not take off as expected, Amit was given the urban development and tourism portfolios. Since tourism was then held by Aaditya in the Maharashtra cabinet, political watchers had viewed this as a move to directly pit one Thackeray scion against the other.
In the first year after his formal entry into politics, Amit mostly chose to stay away from public glare. He would speak up from time to time, for instance, when he wrote to then chief minister Uddhav Thackeray about declaring journalists as frontline workers for prioritising their vaccination, and supporting doctors and nurses protesting against salary cuts.
From the second year onwards, Amit started getting more involved in the party’s administration, its strengthening at ground level, making new appointments and so on, a senior MNS leader said.
Following his appointment as the president of the MNS Vidyarthi Sena, the party’s student wing in 2022, Amit even went on a pan-Maharashtra tour to meet party workers across the state.
“He also pays attention to the main body of the party now, not just the students’ wing. He has worked on further strengthening the cadre base in pockets in Mumbai, where MNS has some influence, such as Vikhroli, Bhandup, Kurla, Dadar and Mahim,” the senior leader added.
In July last year, Amit had found himself at the centre of a political slugfest, when the BJP’s Maharashtra unit had posted a video on its X account, claiming that the MNS scion had allegedly tried to evade toll tax at the Nagpur-Mumbai Samruddhi Expressway. Amit was allegedly stopped at the toll booth due to some mismatch in his FastTag details, which had led to MNS workers ransacking the toll booth.
The MNS had then hit back by sharing a statement by Amit, which said that if the ruling parties had not been busy breaking up the parties, the landslide at Irshalwadi could have been avoided. In a post on X, the party had said that Amit’s statement had had such an impact that “the world’s largest party has come down heavily on a 31-year-old youth”.
EIght months later, MNS Chief Raj Thackeray, along with son Amit, met Union Home Minister Amit Shah in Delhi, and tied up with the BJP and other Mahayuti parties for the Lok Sabha polls.
Another six months later, they are fighting the assembly poll as rivals.
“Our campaign will be against both MVA and Mahayuti. The kind of muck that has been created in politics since 2019… I don’t want it to reach the young men and women at the grassroots, who have dreams of entering politics,” Amit said.
(Edited by Mannat Chugh)
