Slamming the BJP in a hard-hitting speech, Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray has said his party will go it alone in the February civic polls in Mumbai and at other places in Maharashtra
Shiv Sena snaps alliance with BJP in Maharashtra for civic polls
Shiv Sena President Uddhav Thackeray addresses a meeting organised ahead of Municipal Elections in Mumbai on Thursday. Pic/PTI
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Shiv Sena President Uddhav Thackeray on Thursday announced breaking the 25-year old alliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party for the upcoming civic elections across Maharashtra.
"We shall not go around with a begging bowl. We have wasted 25 years in this alliance. But no more. Shiv Sena will contest all the civic body elections independently and will not have an alliance with them (BJP) henceforth," thundered Thackeray at a party workers' rally in suburban Goregaon on Thursday evening.
Thackeray’s announcement this evening ended the suspense over whether the Sena and the BJP, the ruling alliance partners, would fight the election to Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM), the country’s richest civic body, together. Seat-sharing talks between the two parties had hit a deadlock amid bickering.
“I will not bend in front of anybody. If somebody thinks we are lesser than them, we will displace them,” an aggressive Thackeray told a gathering of party workers in suburban Goregaon without naming the BJP.
The Sena was all set to contest the polls without an alliance and he needed foot soldiers who had the “courage to launch a frontal attack, instead of indulging in back-stabbing”, Thackeray said.
“Once I have taken the decision, I do not want anybody to question it. If you promise to stand by me, I have taken the decision to go it alone in Maharashtra. I will not go to anybody with a begging bowl for alliance and will not be at anybody’s mercy. I have decided there will be no alliance for any of the coming municipal corporation or zilla parishad polls,” the Sena chief said.
Referring to the recent protests in Tamil Nadu, he said the coming polls were no less than ‘jallikattu’ where “a bull needs to be tamed” once and for all.
“When you talk of transparency, we expect a similar transparency in the state government and at the Centre,” Thackeray said in an apparent reference to the BJP’s demand of “transparency” in the functioning of the Sena-controlled MCGM.
The much-anticipated move came after a stinging speech in which he criticized the BJP with which the party is in alliance in Maharashtra and centre, and directly targeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The move was greeted with cheers and a thunderous applause with the workers chanting to Thackeray's call for fighting the ensuing elections separately.
Since past few days, talks between the two parties have been faltering with BJP making it clear that it was "prepared to fight alone" if the alliance with Shiv Sena fails to materialise.
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