Watch Nidhi Razdan Maharashtra elections and Uddhav Thackeray’s future

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00:00In the many battles that characterize the election in Maharashtra, one of the key battles

00:08is who is the real inheritor of Bal Thackeray's legacy. Is it his son Uddhav Thackeray who

00:14heads one faction of the Shiv Sena known as the Sena UBT? Or is it Eknath Shinde, the

00:20rebel Sena leader who broke away from Uddhav in 2022 and went on to become Chief Minister

00:26with the BJP's support? For Uddhav Thackeray, the last few years have been quite tumultuous.

00:32Many were surprised when he broke with the BJP back in 2019 over the issue of Rotational

00:37Chief Ministership and ended up in the arms of the Congress and Sharad Pawar's NCP that

00:42supported him to become Chief Minister. It wasn't long before the BJP swung into action

00:47and engineered a split in the Sena with Eknath Shinde walking away with 40 Shiv Sena MLAs.

00:54And since then, it's really been a question of who is the real inheritor of Bal Thackeray's

00:58legacy. Initially, Uddhav Thackeray had a lot of sympathy for the way in which his party

01:03was split. But that sympathy may not necessarily hold in these state elections. One reason

01:10is that Eknath Shinde has surprisingly turned out to be a more effective administrator than

01:16many people had given him any credit for. He has held his own as Chief Minister of Maharashtra

01:22despite having to depend on the BJP for support to stay in office. Despite the fact that someone

01:28as powerful as Divendra Fadnavis, who was once Chief Minister of Maharashtra, is his

01:33deputy at this point. So despite all those headwinds and challenges, Eknath Shinde has

01:38emerged into his own. Under his leadership in the last couple of years, a number of infrastructure

01:43projects have popped up in Mumbai. They've been inaugurated. We've actually seen them

01:49open up, whether it's been roads, tunnels, etc. And his schemes for women in particular

01:55seem to be the game changer for the BJP as far as Maharashtra is concerned. So for Uddhav

02:00Thackeray, the challenge is not a very simple one. It is a very complex one. And who emerges

02:07on top will be one of the key battles to watch out for in these polls.