No clarity though on whether Sena will continue being part of the present BJP-led governments at the Centre and in Maharashtra for their full terms.
Mumbai: Amid increasingly terse relations with ally BJP, the Shiv Sena Tuesday formally resolved to contest the 2019 Lok Sabha and Maharashtra assembly elections on its own strength.
The party, however, stopped short of spelling out its plans on whether it will continue being part of the incumbent BJP-led governments at the Centre and in Maharashtra for their full terms.
The Sena also elevated Thackeray scion Aaditya’s position in the party’s ranks and made him a ‘neta’ at its national executive meeting in Mumbai Tuesday. With this, Aaditya will now be part of the Sena’s core team.
Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray, who was re-elected as party president as a formality, also rejigged Shiv Sena’s leadership team, accommodating four other leaders. They include Union cabinet minister Anant Geete, MPs Anandrao Adsul and Chandrakant Khaire, and state cabinet minister Eknath Shinde.
Sanjay Raut, Rajya Sabha MP and senior Shiv Sena leader, put forth the resolution to snap the Sena’s alliance with the BJP.
“Shiv Sena forged an alliance with the BJP on the Hindutva agenda and has always respected it. However, over the past three years, Shiv Sena has had to make a lot of sacrifices and take blows due to this alliance,” Raut said at the national executive.
“Looking at how the BJP has been trying to sideline the Shiv Sena, the party resolves to contest the 2019 elections on our own strength,” Raut added.
Addressing party workers, Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray said, “The resolutions that we have adopted today have been taken up after giving them complete thought. A Shiv Sainik is not one who just raises his hand, but one who raises his fist.”
He wound up his address by saying, “I will not sit tight until I establish Shiv Sena’s saffron administration in Maharashtra.”
Their loss, says BJP
Reacting to Sena’s stand, BJP’s Mumbai president Ashish Shelar said the loss will be entirely Shiv Sena’s if the party contests the 2019 polls by itself.
“Our stand was to try and form an alliance, but if the Shiv Sena is speaking the language of contesting independently, then BJP is ready too,” he said.
The Shiv Sena is part of the NDA government at the Centre and shares power with the BJP in the Maharashtra government as well. However, the Sena-BJP relationship has been anything but cordial.
The Sena has been playing the role of the opposition from the treasury benches and has over the past few months issued a number of veiled threats of withdrawing support to the government.
Besides resolving to contest the 2019 elections solo, Uddhav Thackeray also announced that the Shiv Sena will contest every election in the country.
“We always took everyone along. We deliberately did not contest elections outside in order to avoid a split in Hindu votes and to protect Hindutva,” he said.
“From now on, Shiv Sena will contest elections in every state on the Hindutva agenda,” Thackeray added, slamming the BJP for capturing power based on false promises to people.
Thackeray also criticised Prime Minister Narendra Modi for taking Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Gujarat and Union cabinet minister Nitin Gadkari for saying that the Indian Navy will not get land for housing in Mumbai.
“There is a general notion that our country has a strong prime minister. Then why is this strong prime minister taking the prime minister of another country to Ahmedabad and flying kites,” he asked.
“Why could he not take Netanyahu to Kashmir instead and raise the Tricolour there to send a strong message?” Thackeray added.
Quit NDA, say analysts
Political observers, however, are of the view that Sena will not be able to send a straightforward political message to the people about its differences with the BJP until it walks out of the government.
“Shiv Sena’s first step should be to get out of the alliance at the earliest. Otherwise, the party will itself have to carry the baggage of any failures of the BJP-led government in Maharashtra that it chooses to highlight to the people,” Mumbai-based political analyst Surendra Jondhale told ThePrint.
“The party also needs time to create an identity of its own outside the government before the election and occupy the space of a real opposition,” he added.
A senior Shiv Sena leader requesting anonymity said, “We have to study the pros and cons of walking out of the government carefully.”
“Elections can be earlier than expected, and we will get an idea of the situation over the next few months depending on the results in other poll-bound states,” the Sena leader added.
There is a very old idiom in bhojpuri on illicit relationship between a man (BHASUR) and his younger brother’s wife(BHAVAJ ). It says
The Bhavaj does not protest because of gifts she gets and the Bhasur persists because of obvious reasons.