Union Home Minister Amit Shah, who is on a two-day visit to Mumbai, launched a scathing attack on Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray on Monday and asked the BJP leaders and workers to inflict a “deeper wound” on Sena on its home turf. Addressing a meeting of the BJP leaders and select functionaries in the Maharashtra capital, Shah said one can tolerate injustice in politics but not treachery.
“They (Sena) should be punished for their deeds and give up on their principles. It is now time to show them their place,” he said.
The former BJP president said Thackeray compromised on everything to become the chief minister with the support of the NCP and the Congress in 2019.
The meeting came ahead of the upcoming elections to the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), the richest civic body in the country, where the Sena has been in power for almost 30 years. In the last elections, the BJP made giant strides by winning 82 of the total 227 seats in the civic body, just two short of Sena's 84.
The BJP has already launched an aggressive campaign to wrest the BMC from the Sena. “Unless BJP gains the control of Mumbai, you cannot win Maharashtra,” Shah told the partymen.
“If you hit a person at any place, it does hurt. When you hit a person on his home ground, the pain is deeper. Now it is the time to inflict a deeper wound to Sena,” he further said.
The Sena fell out with the BJP after the 2019 Assembly elections claiming that the BJP leadership had reneged on its promise to share the post of chief minister on rotation between the two parties. The BJP had denied that it had made any such promise.
At Monday's meeting Shah reiterated that the BJP had never offered any such promise to the Sena. "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," Shah was quoted as saying by NDTV.
In June this year, Eknath Shinde and 39 MLAs of Shiv Sena rebelled against Thackeray and formed the government with the support of the BJP. Shinde took oath as the chief minister while BJP leader Devendra Fadnavisas his deputy.
—With PTI inputs
