Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on Sunday said the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Shiv Sena may have had differences in the past, but the two parties had always remained united by the spirit of Hindutva.

Addressing a pre-election rally of BJP and Sena workers in Aurangabad district, Mr. Fadnavis said the BJP and the Sena had never sought an alliance merely to stay in power, and that while the two parties may have contested one election separately, they were bound by the common thread of Hindutva ideology.

“We were never separated in spirit, merely by nature of circumstances. A number of opposition parties have unsuccessfully attempted to create coalitions against the NDA. In West Bengal, no less than 22 parties had tried to forge a mega alliance, which unravelled in acrimony within a fortnight,” the CM said, expressing confidence that the Sena-BJP ‘Yuti’ would sweep all the eight Lok Sabha constituencies in the Marathwada region.

Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray said relations between the two saffron parties had always been transparent. “There are frequent media jibes about the Sena taking a U-turn in forging an alliance with the BJP after censuring it for so long. But, we [the Sena] have not done anything deceitfully. We attacked the BJP from the front on issues affecting the public and later allied with it in a transparent manner,” he said.

Mr. Thackeray said the Sena had fought for the public by urging its coalition partner to resolve vital issues like the scrapping of the Nanar refinery project and the problems faced by farmers in Marathwada and Vidarbha.

Mr. Fadnavis hit out at Congress president Rahul Gandhi for referring to Jaish-e-Mohammad chief Masood Azhar with the honorific ‘ji’. “Next thing, leaders of the Congress will be referring to Afzal Khan [Adilshahi general who was King Shivaji’s nemesis] as ‘Afzal Khanji’, and Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb as ‘Aurangzebji’…The people will decide in the coming election as to who are patriots and traitors in this country,” the CM said.

Censuring the the tepid response of the Congress-led UPA government in the aftermath of the Mumbai terror attacks, he said, “The earlier government merely talked and complained in the UN about Pakistan’s aggression. But it was only under Prime Minister Narendra Modi that we could take swift retaliatory action against Pakistan. It was PM Modi who gave the armed forces a free hand to avenge the terror strikes launched from Pakistan.”

Mr. Fadnavis said Opposition parties could not coexist together in harmony, much less form coalitions. “In Uttar Pradesh, the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samajwadi Party shunned the Congress and refuse to form an alliance with it,” he said.

Mr. Fadnavis claimed that it was the BJP-Sena government that had succeeded in ameliorating the plight of farmers. “NCP chief Sharad Pawar often tom-toms about a mega loan waiver that the UPA had allegedly given farmers in 2008-09… but in that subsidy, Maharashtra’s share had amounted to a mere ₹4,000 crore, whereas the BJP government has given a ₹21,000 crore waiver for the farmers,” the CM said, adding so far 60 lakh of the 82 lakh farmers had availed of the loan waiver benefits.