Taking a dig at the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader and former Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis’ claim that the BJP would win with a clear majority in the 2024 Maharashtra Assembly elections, Shiv Sena MP Sanjay Raut on Friday said that the Sena was a formidable party and that the tripartite Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) coalition of the Shiv Sena, the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and the Congress did not fear the BJP or any action by Central agencies.
Mr. Raut, his party’s chief spokesperson, further took a jibe at the BJP – the Sena’s erstwhile estranged saffron ally – on the occasion of Holi festivities, remarking that the BJP was full of adulterated colours, while expressing confidence that the MVA would return to power in the next Assembly election.
He reiterated NCP supremo Sharad Pawar’s statement that the MVA wouldn’t let the BJP come back to power in Maharashtra.
“No one is afraid of the BJP. It cannot bring down the MVA government with its phoney allegations against MVA leaders,” Mr. Raut said, adding that the BJP derived its power by backstabbing and lacked any inherent strength of its own.
Remarking that BJP leaders were giving new dates every day while prophesying the imminent fall of the MVA government, the Sena leader said these dates were as fake as the “adulterated colours banned by the BJP-led Central government.”
“Sharad Pawar has given the BJP a fitting reply. He has said that come what may, the BJP would not come to power in Maharashtra again,” Mr. Raut, while tartly advising the BJP to keep trying for a return to power as there was no problem with making such attempts in democracy and politics.
“The BJP uses fake colours. But we [the MVA] are not afraid of them. While Holi comes only once in a year, the BJP’s drama plays out daily,” he said.
Mr. Raut said that while the BJP and Mr. Fadnavis were riding high on their success in wake of the recently concluded Goa Assembly election, they ought to take note that neither the Portuguese nor the British could really understand Goa. Mr. Fadnavis was hailed as the architect of his party’s victory in Goa after the BJP secured a decisive 20 of the 40 Assembly seats to form the government for third consecutive term in the coastal State.
“Devendra Fadnavis has said that the BJP will come to power with a majority in Maharashtra in 2024. His morale has increased since the victory of Goa. But the BJP will soon know what Goa is. Goa couldn’t be understood to Portuguese and the British. Many political parties do not know what Goa is and the politics of Goa,” Mr. Raut said, hinting at the BJP’s possible discomfiture there.
His rhetoric notwithstanding, the Sena-NCP alliance performed dismally in the Goa election, securing a combined vote share of 1.32% of which the Sena’s share was a paltry 0.18% while the NOTA (‘none of the above’) votes stood at 1.12%.
The Sena, which is in alliance with the Congress and the NCP in Maharashtra, was eager to form an alliance with the Goa Congress to take on the BJP only to be coldly rebuffed by the latter. Despite Mr. Raut’s stance of his party being in the reckoning in Goa, the Sena has scant presence there, with its candidates performing even more dismally this time than in the 2017 Assembly election.
