Maharashtra State Chief Eknath Shinde has no plans of stepping down and there is no unrest among the party members over Ajit Pawar and eight other members of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) joining the state government, Shiv Sena (Eknath Shinde faction) politician Uday Samant said on Thursday.
The remarks from Samant came the day after Shinde cancelled all his appointments and called an urgent party meeting at his official residence on Wednesday evening.
While addressing a press conference, Samant said: “We are not resignation givers but takers. His leadership is to take everyone along and be patient. Yesterday, all the lawmakers, parliamentarians have reposed faith in Eknath Shinde... all this (reports of discontent) is being done to malign Eknath Shinde.”
He dismissed the reports claiming that there is discontent among lawmakers and said that the current government has a comfortable majority, with 200 lawmakers.
The Shinde faction politician also claimed that when his group broke away with the Uddhav Thackeray-led group last year, it was said that they were traitors, but now Ajit Pawar joining the government shows that the last coalition (Shiv Sena-NCP-Congress) was not working well.
While talking about the meeting called by Shinde on Wednesday evening, Samant said that all the lawmakers and parliamentarians of the party were present and discussion was about the strategy for the upcoming elections.
The reaction from Samant came amid reports that claimed that Shinde might resign as the State Chief following discontent among his party members over joining of NCP politician Ajit Pawar and his other colleagues.