New Delhi: Amid an ongoing battle with the Shinde faction on the appointment of the chief whip in the Maharashtra Assembly, team Uddhav Thackeray has taken the fight to the Lok Sabha now. The Shiv Sena Chief has decided to replace the chief whip of the Lok Sabha amid reports of party MPs siding with the new Maharashtra Chief Minister.
The party has decided to appoint Rajan Vichare as the new chief whip of Shiv Sena for Lok Sabha and they have sent a letter to Lok Sabha speaker Om Birla for his approval. Vichare will be replacing Bhawani Gill.
Shiv Sena leader Sanjay Raut who is standing in support of Udhav Thackeray said, "We have made changes in Lok Sabha at the command of Uddhav Thackeray, have written a letter to Lok Sabha Speaker to make Rajan Vichare the Chief Whip of the party."
Uddhav Thackeray has already lost 40 MLAs after Eknath Shinde rebelled against the Maha Vikas Aghadi alliance triggering a huge crisis. While Shinde joined hands with the Bhartiya Janata Party forcing Uddhav Thackeray to resign, now spread of the revolt among the MPs will be a huge disadvantage to the Sena, which has 19 members in the Lok Sabha and three in the Rajya Sabha.
While Shinde has said in the Supreme Court that his faction is the real Shiv Sena as it has the support of two-thirds of the party MLAs, the Uddhav faction's trouble can multiply if MPs also join Maharashtra CM's team.
Shinde is yet to stake a claim of the party to the Election Commission while the Uddhav Thackeray faction is said to have retained the party's symbol and name by writing to the EC.
The new Shinde-BJP alliance has already picked a Speaker and a Chief Whip in Maharashtra Assembly. They have also appealed to disqualify MLAs from Team Thackeray for defying the Whip during the trust vote in the assembly.
The Uddhav faction has filed a plea in the Supreme Court against the appointment of the Chief Whip In the Maharashtra Assembly.