Election Commission Should be Dissolved, Supreme Court our Last ray of Hope: Uddhav Thackeray After Losing Sena Name and Symbol

Mumbai: Former Maharashtra chief minister and head of the UBT faction of Shiv Sena Uddhav Thackeray on Monday said that "the Election Commission should be dissolved" and election commissioners should be elected by the people. He made these remarks two days after losing the name and symbol of the Shiv Sena, the party founded by his late father Bal Thackeray, to the faction led by  Chief Minister Eknath Shinde.

Launching a full-blown attack on the poll panel, Uddhav Thackeray slammed the Election Commission's decision that the Eknath Shinde-led faction is real Shiv Sena. “What was the need to give the decision in such a hurry,” Thackeray said at a press conference at Sena Bhavan in Mumbai. “We have lost faith in the Election Commission,” he said.

The election commissioners should be elected and not appointed, he added. “There should be a proper procedure for election commissioners. A similar procedure is in practice when it comes to the appointment of judges in the Supreme Court,” he said. 

“The poll panel's decision to ‘hand over’ Shiv Sena name and symbol (to CM Eknath Shinde) is absolutely wrong. The decision should have been based on the timeline of incidents,” he said. 

“The Commission had asked us to submit affidavits and a list of party workers. We filed lakhs of affidavits and spent lakhs of rupees to submit them. But the EC completely ignored the same while ruling on the party name and symbol,” he said. 

The BJP plans to finish off Shiv Sena, he said. "Stealing our party name and symbol is part of a larger conspiracy," he added. Thackeray said he has received calls from NCP chief Sharad Pawar and West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee extending their support. He said he missed a call with Bihar CM Nitish Kumar.

Uddhav Thackeray also asserted that he had never left Hindutva, though he was accused of doing so when he ended his decades-old alliance with the BJP in 2019. "I never left Hindutva, whoever is a Hindu should speak up now."

He also attacked the BJP for "destroying democracy'' with the help of democratic institutions.