PM Modi didn’t tell truth, says Eknath Khadse

Former BJP leader Eknath Khadse has refuted Prime Minister Narendra Modi's claim that the Shiv Sena broke the alliance, and not the national party, ahead of the Assembly polls in 2014. Khadse said in Mumbai on Wednesday that it was the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) that severed ties with the Sena because the party leaders - the high command and state leadership - strongly felt the BJP was in a position to form the government on its own.

Khadse, the then Opposition leader in the Assembly, was asked to make an announcement on behalf of the party. "What PM Modi said yesterday at the NDA MPs' meeting is not true. The BJP broke the alliance with the Shiv Sena in 2014, it was not the other way, as has been said by the PM," he told a media conference. "For all these years I have been blamed for breaking the alliance. In fact, I just made an announcement as directed by the party," added the leader, who had quit as minister from the Devendra Fadnavis cabinet and later joined the NCP.

Eknath Khadse says Devendra Fadnavis, then state BJP head, should have made the announcement, but he was asked to do it. Pic/Atul Kamble

‘I called Thackeray'

He said Fadnavis who headed the state BJP then, did not want to declare the break-up, instead he shifted the responsibility to others. "Actually, Fadnavis should have made the announcement, but I was asked to do it. I was the Opposition leader and entrusted with major responsibility in the party. I was asked to reach Mumbai from Muktainagar where I had gone to file my election nomination. I flew in a helicopter to be here in Mumbai where all us senior leaders met. I called up Uddhav Thackeray to tell him that our alliance was over because neither of us could reach any decision about seat sharing. I gave him some reasons for our action," he said, adding that Thackeray had sent three senior Sena leaders to stop him from making the split public.

‘BJP was very confident'

Khadse said primarily it was the BJP's strong confidence that the people were in favour of it following the party's massive win the Lok Sabha in 2014, in which the two parties had fought together. "Many leaders from other parties had started joining the BJP for election tickets. The thought that we should go alone in the Assembly elections had been there at least a couple of months before the break-up was announced," he added, saying it was pertinent for him to clear the air.

After the break-up, the BJP had emerged as the single largest party. It ran a minority government for a month, before the Shiv Sena joined it in the government. In 2019, they had regrouped for the Parliamentary and state Assembly polls. They again went their separate ways when Thackeray joined hands with the Congress and NCP to form the MVA government which fell last June.