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No need for seat-sharing talks now: Sena
Neena Vyas
| BJP high command against parting ways with Shiv Sena as it would damage NDA |
Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha L. K. Advani and BJP president Rajnath Singh with Shiv Sena leader Uddhav Thackeray at a meeting in New Delhi on Tuesday.
NEW DELHI: The Bharatiya Janata Party and the Shiv Sena, which on Tuesday announced that their alliance would continue, said they would fight coming elections on the Hindutva plank.
The announcement came after the discussions between senior BJP and Sena leaders.
Earlier, BJP central leaders indicated that they would try to renegotiate the 20-year-old seat-sharing formula with the Sena. The BJP wants more Maharashtra Assembly seats than before as it thinks the “ground reality” has shifted in its favour.
Asked whether he would renegotiate seat distribution with the BJP, Sena president Uddhav Thackeray said no election was announced and there was no need for seat-sharing talks now.
No quarrel
Mr. Thackeray indicated that there would be no quarrel between the partners over who should head a coalition in Maharashtra if they came to power. “Balasaheb [Thackeray], Vajpayeeji and Advaniji will decide,” when the time comes, he said.
In the BJP, general secretary Gopinath Munde and Maharashtra State president Nitin Gadkari had been pushing for a separation from the Sena, but the central leadership was not for a break as it would damage the National Democratic Alliance as a whole, especially at this juncture when most parties talk about the possibility of a mid-term poll following differences between the United Progressive Alliance and its supporting Left parties over the nuclear deal.
Mr. Thackeray let the BJP leaders — who had publicly opposed saving the alliance — do the talking on the decision to make the partnership stronger as if to drive home the message that they were wrong in opposing the continuance of the alliance.
“We [the BJP and the Sena together] won 25 Lok Sabha seats in the 2004 election. United we will work to win more the next time,” Mr. Munde said.
In the morning, Mr. Thackeray, along with some Sena MPs, called on Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. A letter on the Sachar Committee recommendations on Muslims was given to him.
“We [the Sena leaders] asked the Prime Minister to put the Committee report in the dustbin. Any move to implement its suggestions would lead to a second Partition of India,” he told reporters, reiterating the Sena views, also supported by the BJP, that no special facility should be extended to the minorities.
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