Wounded Shiv Sena blames loss on media

At a time when the Shiv Sena should be wondering about the wrong decisions it made and introspect, the party is busy blaming the Congress-NCP combine and the English-language media for its loss, saying that these organisations popularised MNS and the Marathi votes were split.

Sena spokesperson Neelam Gorhe said, "The non-Marathi speaking media, the Congress and the NCP have created a monster out of MNS and the party then split the Marathi vote. This is the main reason why the Sena-BJP combine fared poorly. How else do you explain the media's obsession with Raj Thackeray when there are serious issues like farmer suicides?"

BJP spokesperson Madhav Bhandari is disappointed that the alliance suffered severely because the MNS cut into the votebank of its partner Shiv Sena.

According to Dilip Sarvate, a psephologist, "We expected MNS to split the Marathi vote bank and indirectly help theu00a0 Congress-NCP combine. That's exactly what happened. Shiv Sena was the worst hit."