Uddhav didn't give enough time to Sena MLAs when he was CM, says rebel legislator Gulabrao Patil

Uddhav Thackeray. File Pic

Rebel Shiv Sena MLA Gulabrao Patil said party president Uddhav Thackeray did not give enough time to the party legislators during his tenure as Maharashtra chief minister. The former minister also said that Thackeray should get rid of the coterie of party leaders around him.

"A 'sarpanch' (elected village head) ought to give audience to every elected representative of the local governing body. When Thackeray was just the party head, we could raise our complaints against a minister if he or she did not cooperate," Patil told a regional new channel. "But after he became the chief minister, there was no one whom we could turn to for taking up our complaints of works not getting done. He should have given enough audience to the legislators," he said. Several rebel Sena leaders have earlier blamed party's chief spokesperson Sanjay Raut for the strain in ties between the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Sena.

But without taking anyone's name, Patil said, "There are some leaders surrounding Thackeray, who are damaging Shiv Sena further. Because of these leaders, people like us suffer...We were made to wait for hours. We are elected representatives who have won elections with the support of nearly three lakh voters, and still we get such disrespectful treatment." "Many people who are in the inner circle of Thackeray, have never won an election. But they never treated us with respect," he said.

Patil is among the 40 Sena MLAs who rebelled against the party leadership. Due to the rebellion led by Eknath Shinde, the Thackeray-led Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government collapsed on June 29. The next day, Shinde took oath as the chief minister, while BJP's Devendra Fadnavis became his deputy.

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