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During the cross examination of Shiv Sena legislator and Minister Uday Samant in the MLAs’ disqualification hearing before Assembly Speaker Rahul Narwekar on Monday, Samant claimed that in 2019, Uddhav Thackeray had assured MLAs that he would form government with the BJP in due course after forming the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government and hence the Sena MLAs had agreed for alliance with NCP and Congress.
Samant said he also took the oath because of the assurance given by Uddhav. “Many Shiv Sena MLAs who were not happy with the alliance of Sena with NCP and Congress, and formation of a government with them as MVA, had expressed their displeasure before Eknath Shinde, who was the Sena group leader in the state legislature. We had also expressed our displeasure before Uddhav Thackeray, who had then assured us that Sena will form a government with the BJP in some days. We wanted to have an alliance with the BJP with whom we had a natural pre-poll alliance. So we took up this issue repeatedly with Shinde and Uddhav Thackeray. We were assured by Uddhav then that in future Sena will ally with the BJP and things will be worked out,” Samant said.
Samant also said he never had signed on any documents after Shinde launched a rebellion and that his fake signature may have been recorded as he did not receive any whip from Sena MLA Sunil Prabhu to attend the party meeting at Varsha, the CM’s official residence in June 2022.
Earlier on Friday, Shiv Sena UBT produced an attendance sheet of a meeting of Sena MLAs held on June 21, 2022 at Varsha bungalow of the then Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray which shows that 23 Sena MLAs had attended the meeting and approved the proposal to remove Eknath Shinde from the post of group leader of undivided Sena legislators in state assembly.
Later, out of these 23, eight joined the Shinde faction and only 14 remained with Uddhav faction.
Eventually, 40 MLAs left Uddhav and joined the Shinde faction and only 15 MLAs were left with Uddhav in July 2022.
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