Union Minister of Home Affairs Amit Shah, also the chief strategist of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party held the former Maharashtra Chief Minister, Uddhav Thackeray responsible for betrayals, intra-party rift and the subsequent events.
Lambasting Shiv Sena’s Uddhav Thackeray for betraying the BJP, Home Minister Amit Shah said – “Thackeray must be taught a lesson.” Amit Shah accused the former Maharashtra Chief Minister of being responsible for the split in his party and the related events. “We can tolerate anything in politics but not betrayal,” Shah said at the meeting.
Amit Shah, said, “His (Thackeray’s) ‘greed’ was the reason a section of his party had turned against him, brushing off any BJP hand in the rebellion by Eknath Shinde and the subsequent toppling of the ‘Maha Vikas Aghadi’ coalition headed by Thackeray.”
The Maha Vikas Aghadi (MHA) is a state-level political coalition formed after the 2019 Maharashtra Legislative Assembly elections under the leadership of Uddhav Thackeray of Shiv Sena (Uddhav faction), Sharad Pawar of the NCP and Sonia Gandhi of the INC, along with the support from the Samajwadi Party, PWPI, Prahar Janshakti Party (PPP) and several other political parties including Independent MLAs.
“Uddhav Thackeray had not only betrayed the BJP but also the ideology and had insulted the mandate of the people of Maharashtra,” Shah said. Shah asserted, “His party has shrunk today because of his ‘greed for power, not the BJP. Today, I want to say again that we never promised Uddhav Thackeray the post of Chief Minister. We are people who practice politics openly and not in closed rooms.”
“Those who cheat in politics must be punished,” he declared- “This can be achieved through ‘Mission 150’ for the coming civic elections in Mumbai,” Shah stated.
The Brihanmumbai Corporation (BMC) is the country’s richest civic body which the BJP has been trying to control for long. “Under the guidance of Narendra Modi, the target of the BJP and the real Shiv Sena alliance should be to win 150 seats in the BMC elections. The public is with the BJP led by Modi-ji, not with Uddhav Thackeray’s party, which betrays ideology,” as Shah pointed at Thackeray’s earlier statement.
Earlier, the Sena and the BJP had shared an uneasy relationship since the alliance broke in the year 2014 over seat sharing in the run-up to the assembly polls, but they got together after the state delivered a split verdict. After the 2019 assembly polls, the Sena fell out with BJP again and had tied up with Sharad Pawar’s Nationalist Congress Party and the Congress to form the Maha Vikas Aghadi government.
Thackeray had accused the BJP of betrayal and alleged that they were expanding in Maharashtra at the cost of the Sena. Earlier this year, Thackeray had reiterated that his party had ‘wasted 25 years in alliance with the BJP’. “The 25 years of the Sena spent with BJP as an ally were ‘rotted’- Uddhav Thackeray mentioned while addressing Shiv Sainiks virtually on the 96th birth anniversary of the party founder and his father Bal Thackeray.
Thackeray furthered this during his address- “We supported the BJP whole-heartedly to enable them to fulfil their national ambitions. The understanding was that they will go national while we will lead in Maharashtra. But we were betrayed and attempts were made to destroy us in our home. So, we had to hit back.”
