Following senior Congress leader and former Maharashtra Chief Minister Ashok Chavan’s exit from the Congress, Shiv Sena-Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray (UBT) chief Uddhav Thackeray on Monday said Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had low self-confidence ahead of the Lok Sabha election, questioning their need to relentlessly poach leaders from Opposition parties.
While Mr. Chavan has yet to announce his future course of action, Mr. Thackeray implied that the Congress leader would join the BJP.
Addressing a rally at Sambhajinagar (formerly Aurangabad), Mr. Thackeray, the Chief Minister of the erstwhile Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government in which Mr. Chavan had served as a Cabinet Minister, hit out at Mr. Modi’s claim that the BJP and its allies would cross 400 seats in the upcoming General Election.
“In Parliament, our honourable PM recently gave a speech boasting the BJP would cross 400 seats. If so, why do you feel the need to break other parties and keep poaching leaders. In Bihar, it poached Nitish Kumar. In Maharashtra, it is Ashok Chavan, Ajit Pawar and Eknath Shinde. Is the BJP’s self-confidence so low?” Mr. Thackeray said, claiming the BJP would not even cross 40 Lok Sabha seats in the General Election.
The Sena (UBT) chief also trained his guns at the Election Commission of India (ECI). “The cunning ECI had given the Shiv Sena to thieves [in a reference to the Eknath Shinde faction]. They then gave the NCP (Nationalist Congress Party) to thieves [alluding to the Ajit Pawar faction]. Will they now give the Congress to Ashok Chavan?” Mr. Thackeray said.
He added that at the rate the BJP was poaching leaders from the Opposition, the future national president of the saffron party could well be an ex-Congress leader soon.
“A few years ago, the BJP’s slogan was ‘Congress mukt Bharat’. Now, it may well be a BJP that includes the Congress,” Mr. Thackeray quipped.
He said the manner in which the BJP had set out to destroy the Congress, the Shiv Sena and the NCP in Maharashtra would never be forgiven by the State’s public.
Sambhajinagar holds a special significance for both rival Shiv Sena factions as it was here that the late Shiv Sena founder Bal Thackeray had addressed a massive rally in the 1980s while calling for ‘Aurangabad’ (named after the 17th century Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb) to be renamed as ‘Sambhajinagar’ (after Chhatrapati Sambhaji, the Maratha king who was murdered by Aurangzeb).
After the Sena founder’s rally in 1988, which saw the Shiv Sena move away from its nativist ‘Marathi manoos (man)’ plank to advocating staunch ‘Hindutva’ ideals, the Shiv Sena came to power in the Aurangabad civic body and has remained the dominant force here despite inroads by the All India Majlis-E-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) in recent years.
