Speculation about a rebellion within Shiv Sena (UBT) gained traction last week after Uddhav Thackeray convened a meeting of the party’s Lok Sabha MPs. However, the roots of the unrest appear to trace back to a 20-year-old murder case whose aftereffects may have recently influenced the Sena’s political narrative.
Six MPs – Sanjay Dina Patil, Nagesh Patil Ashtikar, Om Raje Nimbalkar, Bhausaheb Wakchaure, Sanjay Deshmukh and Sanjay Jadhav – are expected to split from the party and support the rival Sena, part of the NDA bloc.
The rebellion buzz became evident when the six MPs skipped the Sena-UBT’s Friday event celebrating party’s 60th foundation day and Uddhav launching an all-out attack at the rebels. While the development over the past few days have garnered spotlight, a key event that has been invoked is Pawanraje Nimbalkar’s murder in 2006.
Pawanraje Nimbalkar, a Congress leader, also happens to be the father of Om Raje Nimbalkar, one of the alleged rebel MPs. Raje is an MP from Osmanabad (Dharashiv) in the Marathwada region.
Pawanraje Nimbalkar’s murder and political fallout
Pawanraje Nimbalkar was murdered on June 3, 2006 along with his driver, Samad Abdul Wahid Kazi, while driving from Pune to Mumbai. The case had several accused, including the victim’s first cousin and former Maharashtra home minister Padmasinh Bajirao Patil.
Earlier in Saturday (June 20), all nine accused, including Patil, were acquitted by a special CBI court.
The murder case was interlinked with the politics of Osmanabad in Marathwada and dominated political discourse through the last 20 years.
Pawanraje Nimbalkar and Padmasinh Patil were first cousins and their family dominated the politics in the region through cooperative bodies including the Terna Sugar co-op.
When Sharad Pawar founded NCP in 1999 after splitting from Congress, Patil moved with him. Nimbalkar joined Congress and the two contested the 1999 assembly elections against each other. Patil narrowly defeated his rival Nimbalkar by a margin of 484 votes. The rivalry was not only evident in politics, but spread to their business as well.
One of the key factors that was raised by the CBI investigating the case was of the alleged fraud in the funds raised after the Kargil war.
Padamsinh Patil, then a minister in Maharashtra, was accused of misusing funds collected for the families of Kargil war martyrs. The CBI had said that the fraud was exposed by anti-corruption activist Anna Hazare with the information provided to him by Pawanraje Nimbalkar.
Twenty years later, a special CBI court on Saturday acquitted all nine accused in the case, including Patil. While the prosecution alleged Patil and other accused were part of a conspiracy to eliminate Nimbalkar, the court found the evidence insufficient to convict them.
How the murder case influenced Sena rift
Days before the court delivered its verdict in the murder case, Sena UBT MP Sanjay Raut claimed several inducements were being offered to rebel MPs to engineer a second split in the party.
He went on saying that Om Raje Nimbalkar was lured with a “favourable verdict” in his father Pawan Raje Nimbalkar’s murder case to switch over from the Shiv Sena (UBT) to Shiv Sena.
Rebel Sena UBT MP Nimbalkar said he was exiting Sena (UBT) to join the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena “not driven by greed for money” but “for political survival to fight his father’s killer”.
“I joined politics 20 years ago to fight against those who killed my father; and through those years I fought a legal and political battle against that family in Dharashiv. I have no complaint against Sena (UBT) chief Uddhav Thackeray. I won the Lok Sabha election by a huge margin against the resourceful and powerful candidate from the rival family. We also retained our strength in the assembly elections,” Nimbalkar said, adding “But the new government in Maharashtra has blocked me at all levels.”
What Om Raje Nimbalkar said on Sena ‘split’
Om Raje Nimbalkar said he was shocked at the verdict and said he would appeal against the order in the high court.
“The verdict is unfortunate and has come as a shock to us. However, instead of commenting on the verdict, we would prefer to approach the high court and continue the fight. We will all the available legal remedies seeking justice,” Nimbalkar said.
Nimbalkar had been fighting to get all the 9 accused convicted in the case. The court was initially scheduled to deliver the verdict on May 14, however, it was deferred to June 16. The verdict was finally delivered on June 20.
