17 May,2023 03:14 PM IST | Mumbai | mid-day online correspondent
Shiv Sena leader Sanjay Raut. File Photo/PTI
Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Sanjay Raut on Wednesday claimed that wherever Bharatiya Janata Party President JP Nadda goes, the party loses. Raut's comments came amid Nadda's two-day visit to Maharashtra.
However, the Bharatiya Janata Party leader and Member of Legislative Assembly Nitesh Rane reacted sharply to Raut's comments and accused him of targeting individuals on constitutional posts and inciting the administration against the government. "All these are signs of an urban Naxal," Rane claimed.
The Bharatiya Janata Party faced a defeat at the hands of the Congress party, in the recently concluded Assembly polls in the southern state of Karnataka.
The senior Sena leader said that Nadda stayed put in Karnataka to campaign for his party, but it was defeated. Now he is coming to Maharashtra. "We welcome him. Wherever he goes, BJP loses," he said while speaking to reporters in Nashik.
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Raut also targeted Maharashtra Assembly speaker Rahul Narwekar and said that defection is his hobby and also profession. "There is no party in the state of which he hasn't been a member."
Pertinently, the Supreme Court of India, in its verdict on the Shiv Sena-centric tussle that led to the fall of the Maha Vikas Aghadi government in Maharashtra last year, on May 11 said it can't reinstate the then chief minister Uddhav Thackeray as he chose to resign without facing the floor test.
Refusing to disqualify the 16 rebel Shiv Sena MLAs, including Chief Minister Eknath Shinde, the top court said it cannot ordinarily adjudicate disqualification petitions under the anti-defection law and directed Speaker Narwekar to take a decision on the pending matter within a "reasonable period".
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To a query on notices likely to be issued to Shiv Sena MLAs, Raut claimed, "The notices are being sent by Narwekar and not the Assembly Speaker. The manner in which Narwekar has been speaking to the media in the last few days shows the Constitution is being misused to break to rule of law.'"
For the first time, a presiding officer was declaring in public what decision he will be taking, the Rajya Sabha member said.
Narwekar on Tuesday said the decision on the disqualification of 16 MLAs, including CM Shinde, will start from the point of which faction was representing the actual Shiv Sena in July 2022- after the split engineered by Shinde.
He also said the Election Commission's decision to allot the 'Shiv Sena' name and its symbol to the faction led by CM Shinde is a "prospective" decision and not retrospective.
"One needs to check what are Raut's designs. Earlier it was the governor, Supreme Court, now Speaker...and also asking the police and administration to disobey the government. Urban Naxals get funding from other countries," Rane claimed. (With inputs from PTI)