Shiv Sena (UBT) accuses Congress for making mess of Opposition bloc

Saamana editorial slams grand old party for terming AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal a traitor; says INDIA, MVA has lost their sheen

Shiv Sena (UBT) has blamed the Congress for making a mess of the INDIA bloc and Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA). It said in an editorial in Saamana, the party’s mouthpiece, on Monday that being the largest Opposition party, the Congress was responsible for holding the bloc together.

The editorial said INDIA needed unity, leadership, and if possible a convenor, to strongly fight the BJP. It requested the Congress to keep interacting with the other Opposition parties. It asked who was responsible if the people thought that INDIA at the national level and MVA at the state level, were messy. There was a time when both fronts had created confidence in the people that the BJP could be beaten. But now, both are inactive and have lost their sheen, it added.   

Saamana said the Congress did not like other party leaders to captain the INDIA bloc. It also criticised the Congress for terming Arvind Kejriwal a traitor. In Delhi, the Congress may contest against AAP, but calling Kejriwal a traitor doesn’t suit the Congress culture, it stated further. It said the regional parties had no option but to contest against the Congress in their respective states because they wanted their space and to keep their ideology intact and workers protected. But in many states, the Congress cannot fight alone because it does not have its own strength. Congress should not behave like the BJP, “which finishes its smaller allies”, the editorial stated.

It said Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo generated energy for the Congress and others. But now, who will take up the task of correcting the disturbances that have cropped up in the INDIA bloc? Gandhi is the Opposition leader who fights against the government in Parliament, but parties that are together in Parliament go their own ways outside it, is said, giving an example of the NDA meeting regularly when there was a national issue.

“Leaders like Pramod Mahajan and Lal Krishna Advani would meet regional party leaders in the state they were from. The NDA also had a convenor like George Fernandes, who kept communicating with the alliance’s parties and invited them, extending due respect, to meetings that Atal Behari Vajpayee and Advani would chair,” stated the editorial, adding that such gestures had created a family-like atmosphere in the NDA.

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