Why Sanjay Raut finds himself in fresh trouble

Months after he was released on bail in an offence of alleged money laundering that is being probed by the Enforcement Directorate (ED), Shiv Sena Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Raut found himself in a fresh controversy. Raut, who is with the Uddhav Thackeray faction of the Shiv Sena, allegedly referred to the state legislature as a ‘chor mandal’ or a collective of thieves, inviting charges of breaching the legislature’s privilege. BJP MLA Atul Bhatkhalkar moved a privilege motion against Raut and a privilege committee under the BJP’s Rahul Kul will probe the issue. Assembly speaker Rahul Narvekar last week gave more time to Raut to respond to the motion in writing.

On his part, Raut has clarified that his ‘chor mandal’ remarks were aimed only at party legislators who have defected to Shiv Sena rebel and chief minister Eknath Shinde. But this is not the first time that Raut has found himself in the eye of the storm. Last month, he had charged that Dr Shrikant Shinde, the Lok Sabha MP from Kalyan and the son of chief minister Eknath Shinde, had given a supari (contract) to bump him off.

Raut, a crime reporter of long standing and the executive editor of the Shiv Sena mouthpiece Saamna, is one of the few journalists who have the privilege of becoming the story.

With his roots at Choundi village near Alibag in Raigad district, Raut began his career in journalism as a contributor to publications like Ranjan. More crucially, he also wrote for Marmik, the cartoon weekly started (1960) by Bal Thackeray and his younger brother Shrikant. It was Marmik that catalysed the launch of the Shiv Sena in 1966 by raising issues related to the Maharashtrians in Mumbai.

His stint with Marmik helped Raut come in close contact with the Thackeray brothers, Bal and Shrikant. Raut was among the few who were close to Shrikant, who was a cartoonist, film critic, feature writer and music composer. Raut was among those who called Shrikant ‘Pappa.’

Raut worked in the circulation and marketing departments of the Indian Express group in the 1980s and later moved to its Marathi weekly Lokprabha, where he earned his spurs as a reporter on the crime and politics beats. “He was an ace crime reporter with good contacts in the city’s underbelly, especially among Marathi gangsters who were part of the Mumbai underworld,” said a then professional colleague, who recalled some of the cover stories on the gangs that Raut had written for Lokprabha. “He was more daring-baaz (courageous) than the political journalists of the day and would report from the field rather than write table stories,” explained another colleague.

In 1993, Ashok Padbidri, the socialist-leaning executive editor of Saamna, was replaced by Raut. Raut has held this position for the past three decades. “This is an achievement in itself as he is leading the mouthpiece of a party that constantly found itself in a controversy, and was the voice of a leader (Bal Thackeray) known for his aggression,” said the second journalist quoted above.

Raut was also part of the circle of Uddhav, the youngest son of Bal Thackeray, and Raj, Shrikant’s son. Raj, who was then the Shiv Sena’s rising star, is said to have played a major role in Raut’s recruitment in Saamna. The camaraderie between Raut and Raj continued even after the latter left the Shiv Sena in 2005 at the culmination of a bitter power struggle with first cousin Uddhav to form his own Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) the next year. When Raj quit the party after writing a resignation letter to his uncle, Bal Thackeray is said to have had a look at the language and content and told Raut: “Sanjay, he tuzha kaam distay (Sanjay, this seems to be your handiwork).”

The reason was obvious—Raut held fort for Thackeray Senior, who was the editor of Saamna, and wrote editorials mirroring the style of his boss. He was seen as the editorial alter ego of the Shiv Sena chief, on whom he made a biopic in 2019. Even today, Raut usually writes his editorials by hand.

However, Raut found himself in trouble thrice for his writings and editorial positions taken by Saamna. In 2008, at the height of an anti-Hindi speaking migrant campaign launched by the MNS, Saamna front-paged a report pointing to actor Rajinikanth’s solidarity with Tamil Nadu on the Hogenakkal water dispute with Karnataka. It added that Rajinikanth, a Maharashtrian who grew up in Karnataka, had overshadowed Amitabh Bachchan with this act of loyalty despite being an outsider in his state. This had come after Raj Thackeray had attacked Bachchan for being more loyal to his home state of Uttar Pradesh than Maharashtra, where he built his career. After a media frenzy, Bal Thackeray tried to underplay the controversy and called Bachchan a family friend.

The next year, after the MNS walked away with a chunk of the Marathi vote and engineered the defeat of the Shiv Sena-BJP alliance in the assembly election, an editorial in Saamna accused the Maharashtrians of Mumbai of stabbing the Shiv Sena in the back. After an outrage, Bal Thackeray denied that he had written this. On May 1, 2014, when polling for the Lok Sabha elections had ended, an editorial attacked Gujarati-speakers in Mumbai with the choicest epithets, forcing the Shiv Sena to fire-fight and clip Raut’s wings for a while.

In 2004, Raut was elected to the Rajya Sabha. It is here that he came close to NCP chief Sharad Pawar, who was the agriculture minister in the Congress-led UPA government. “In Delhi, Pawar and senior BJP leader Pramod Mahajan, would hand-hold first-term MPs from Maharashtra in the corridors of power in the national capital. This brought him close to Pawar, whom he had once criticised in the editorial columns of Saamna,” said a former Shiv Sena leader, who is now with the BJP. Another former Sena MP, who is now with Shinde, recalled that Raut could often be found at Pawar’s official residence in Delhi.

In 2005, former chief minister Narayan Rane quit the Shiv Sena to join the Congress and his men took on Shiv Sainiks in pitched street fights, putting the Sena on the defensive. Then, Raut would reportedly co-ordinate with Pawar and the NCP’s home minister R.R. Patil. This brought Raut closer to Pawar and in 2006, when Pawar’s daughter Supriya Sule debuted in politics, Raut was among those who is said to have ensured she was elected unopposed to the Rajya Sabha.

This proximity would help Pawar and Raut catalyse the launch of the Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi (MVA) in 2019 to make Uddhav the chief minister and keep the BJP out of power. Incidentally, in 2008, Pawar and Raut had unsuccessfully tried to ensure that the Shiv Sena and NCP joined hands in a pre-poll alliance in the Lok Sabha elections held the next year.

The gradual withdrawal of the Shiv Sena’s most prominent face in New Delhi—former Lok Sabha speaker Manohar Joshi—from national and party politics around 2012 ensured that Raut took over his role. This coincided with calls from within the BJP for anointing then Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi as the party’s prime ministerial face. Raut was among those in the Shiv Sena who were uncomfortable at this. Hence, he was part of the caucus of Sena leaders who ensured that Bal Thackeray backed then leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Sushma Swaraj as their choice for the prime minister’s post.

Gradually, the mercurial Raut became the enfant terrible of the Shiv Sena, even using expletives on live television for a senior BJP leader who had made allegations against him. During the MVA regime, Raut’s daily durbar outside his flat at Dadar in central Mumbai, Bhandup in the eastern suburbs or at his Safdurjung Lane residence in Lutyens Delhi, where he gave bombastic media bytes, jarred even the party faithful.

That Raut was a thorn in the side for the opponents of the then undivided Shiv Sena became obvious when he won the Rajya Sabha elections for his fourth term in Parliament by a sliver and the party’s other nominee Sanjay Pawar faced a shock defeat in the June 2022 polls and the BJP’s Dhananjay (Munna) Mahadik sailed through. The BJP, with the tacit support from MVA elements, including those from the Shiv Sena, is said to have made elaborate arrangements to defeat Raut, in an election which saw the first stirrings of Eknath Shinde’s rebellion which was to come just days later.

Though this development was overshadowed by Shinde’s rebellion, Shiv Sena leaders admitted that Independent legislators close to the NCP may have played a role in the Sena’s Rajya Sabha debacle.

But, at a time when many Shiv Sena legislators and leaders facing allegations of financial irregularities jumped ship to Eknath Shinde during his June 2022 coup to make peace with the BJP, Raut’s defiant and unfazed position as he was arrested by the ED struck a chord with most loyalist Shiv Sainiks.

Though a senior Shiv Sena leader from the Uddhav Thackeray camp admitted that Raut needed to measure his words to ensure that the party did not lose the latent sympathy among the people, he pointed out that the Rajya Sabha MP was giving Shinde and BJP as good as it gets. For, as the Sena leader claimed, when it comes to street fighting, one must fight dirty.

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