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Post Maharashtra assembly results, Shiv Sena has decided to play hard ball and demanded implementation of the 50: 50 formula much to the agony of it’s ally the BJP.
In it’s latest jibe at BJP , the Sena has now said that it had had the “remote control of power” in Maharashtra despite getting fewer seats in the 2019 assembly polls when compared to 2014.
During the first Sena-Bharatiya Janata Party government in the state, between 1995 to 1999, the term remote control was regularly used for and by the late party patriarch Bal Thackeray to explain the chain of command in the dispensation.
Among Sena’s demands is a written assurance from the BJP on “equal sharing of power”, which could possibly include equal division of the chief ministerial tenure.
In his column ‘Rokhthok’ in Sena mouthpiece ‘Saamana’, Sanjay Raut said, “The Sena won less seats this time, 56 compared to 63 in 2014, but it has the remote control of power”.
“The dream that the Shiv Sena will drag itself behind the BJP is busted (after poll results). A cartoon showing a tiger (Sena’s identity) holding a lotus (BJP’s symbol) in its hand tells a lot about the current scenario. Not taking anyone for granted is the message,” he said in his column.
Raut is the executive editor of Saamana and also the chief whip of the party in Parliament.
The column hinted that the Sena would stay firm on its demands before government formation with the BJP.
Hitting out at its ally further, he wrote, “The BJP’s strategy of contesting 164 seats and winning 144 of them was rejected by voters. The election result is the defeat of unethical thoughts of increasing the tally by getting key Congress-NCP leaders to join the BJP, by luring them or threatening them.”
