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With the Mumbai civic body yet to take a call on the applications filed by rebel Shiv Sena camps to hold the annual Dussehra rally at Shivaji Park, Bharatiya Janata Party leader and Maharashtra minister Sudhir Mungantiwar on Wednesday said the pleas may be rejected and the applicants asked to hold their respective events at some other public places.
The Dussehra rally is the major event in the annual calendar of Shiv Sena since the days of the late Bal Thackeray.
The situation changed after Eknath Shinde rebelled with 40 MLAs against Sena president Uddhav Thackeray and staked claim to the party and the poll symbol.
The factions led by Chief Minister Shinde and Thackeray had applied separately in the Mumbai civic body for permission to organise the Dussehra rally at the Shivaji Park.
“The administration may reject applications of both the sides and ask them to hold their respective rallies at some other public places,” Mungantiwar told reporters but didn't elaborate.
The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation was ruled by the Shiv Sena for almost three decades.
Currently, its affairs are managed by a state administrator as the term of the civic body has ended and the election schedule has not yet been announced.
Mungantiwar, who holds the forest portfolio in the Eknath Shinde-Devendra Fadnavis government, also said the poll symbol of Shiv Sena -- a bow and arrow -- belongs to the Shinde camp.
“Eknath Shinde had demanded to freeze the Sena's election symbol in the Supreme Court. I think that a party symbol belongs to its members and it's not the property of an individual. If Shinde enjoys the support of 40 MLAs of original Shiv Sena he has the right to claim the poll symbol,” he said.
Mungantiwar said a poll symbol is not a property that outsiders cannot stake claim to.
Earlier in the day, a five-judge Constitution bench of the Supreme Court had said that it will hear on September 27, an application of the Uddhav Thackeray-led faction seeking to restrain the Election Commission from deciding on the claim of Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde-led group over the "original" Shiv Sena party.
Senior BJP leader and state Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis has dismissed allegations that the Mumbai civic body was blocking all the grounds for the Dussehra rally.
"The state government has not blocked any grounds. Permissions will be given as per norms," he said in Nagpur.
Leader of Opposition in Maharashtra Legislative Council, Ambadas Danve, a Thackeray loyalist, said, “The Eknath Shinde camp is scared of facing elections with the party symbol and hence it wants to freeze it. It shows their insecurity vis-a-vis the elections”.
He said the Shiv Sena has been holding the annual Dussehra rally at Shivaji Park every year.
"It is the Shiv Sena's right to hold the rally at the spot. The Shinde camp is playing unethical tricks to put a spanner in the wheel (of Shiv Sena),” Danve alleged.