BJP may attempt to create trouble between two communities: Patil

Patil was speaking at the Express Townhall, organised by The Indian Express, in Mumbai.

Maintaining that Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government will have to be vigilant to stall such incidents in the state, Patil said, “With local body elections coming up, there may be some attempts to create some trouble between two communities or two religious groups. There could be an attempt to create riots in Maharashtra. The home department needs to be very alert.”

Alleging that the communal agenda of the BJP had paid off in the recent Uttar Pradesh polls, Patil said he feared that the BJP would try to use a similar divisive agenda in Maharashtra.

“Communal politics will work in certain pockets (of Maharashtra). We cannot totally ignore it. It will work. Now, minority-dominated constituencies will behave differently and their neighbouring constituencies will behave differently. For example, the Malegaon Outer Assembly seat behaves differently when compared to Malegaon Central Assembly seat (minority-dominated). Likewise, people do react to communal politics. So, we can’t totally ignore it.” He added that priority will be given forming an alliance of three MVA parties in the local bodies elections.

“We will give priority to the MVA. If not (MVA), then two parties at least should come together. But the priority is to form an alliance of all three parties. Also, we have smaller parties such as Samajwadi Party and Prahar Janshakti Party, among others. At the municipal or district level, we will try to bring everybody together. Somewhere it will happen, somewhere it may not happen and somewhere it will be partial. An attempt will definitely be made,” said Patil.

Ruling out any future alliance with the AIMIM, the minister said the party was losing ground in the state. “In the seats where minority population is high, AIMIM candidates may get less votes compared to the votes polled in the last election. People have realised that AIMIM is BJP’s B team. In the last Assembly elections, Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi and AIMIM forged an alliance and tried to take away a large number of votes. It led to our seats getting reduced.”

“We (Congress and NCP) won around 100 seats… the tally could have gone up to 120-130 seats but they took away a certain share of votes,” Patil added. “We were willing to take them in an alliance but we realised that they never wanted to go for an alliance.”