Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president J.P. Nadda on Sunday said the party’s break-up with the Shiv Sena in Maharashtra is an opportunity to ensure the BJP will no more require an ally in the State in future.
Directing party workers to not live in the hope to see the present tripartite Maha Vikas Aghadi government fall, Mr. Nadda said the situation where every party is contesting against the BJP will ensure that the latter sweeps the polls.
Mr. Nadda was addressing the party’s State council conference in Navi Mumbai. This was Mr. Nadda’s first interaction with the party leaders after he became the president, along with newly-appointed State BJP chief Chandrakant Patil and Mumbai unit chief Mangal Prabhat Lodha.
“Today what we are seeing is a position of all versus us. This is an opportunity for the party to ensure we won’t require an ally in future. This is an unrealistic and unnatural alliance and it should continue. The BJP will single-handedly win the next Assembly election in Maharashtra,” Mr. Nadda said.
Mr. Patil along with former Chief Minister and Leader of Opposition Devendra Fadnavis seconded Mr. Nadda, sending a clear message that the BJP will not be investing resources to bring down the government but would rather wait to fall on its own. “Don’t just sit down idle. We will be working as an active, effective, and quality opposition. We will be taking on the government directly and aggressively. An opposition cannot make a truce with the government,” Mr. Fadnavis said, adding that it was the betrayal of the Sena which forced the BJP to sit in the opposition.
Slamming Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray over his Saturday statement challenging the BJP to bring down the government, Mr. Fadnavis said he doesn’t have such dreams. “But I challenge you to go for people’s mandate yet again and show whether you truly deserve to be in power.”
“The Arjuna in Mahabharata faced the question of how to wage a war on his own brothers. But lord Krishna showed him the difference between dharma and adharma. The Sena today stands with adharma and therefore even though they were our brothers before, we will have to fight a war against them,” Mr. Fadnavis said.
While asking the party workers to take on the government with aggression, Mr. Patil announced to conduct a sit-in in front of every tehsil in the State on February 22 over the issues of farmers, atrocities against women, and the government’s decisions to stall development projects.
The party also announced to fight the Navi Mumbai and Aurangabad municipal corporation elections on its own.