‘BJP-Sena alliance set to come to power in Maharashtra’: Uddhav Thackeray

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Amid reports of friction between the saffron allies over seat sharing for the upcoming Maharashtra Assembly polls, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Mumbai on Saturday indicated that all was well among the allies.

Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis ensured that Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray shared the dias with PM Modi and Thackeray in his speech praised the Prime Minister announcing that the next state government would only be from the saffron alliance.

The Prime Minister also referred to Thackeray at the beginning of his address as his “younger brother”.

“We are heading into polls soon. And, only our alliance will come to power,” said Thackeray, confirming that the BJP-Sena would contest the polls together. He added that he could see that Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis had applauded the most at his statement.

“Yes, we want power but we are not lusting after power. We want power to bring in development,” said the Sena chief. He was speaking at the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) function at Bandra Kurla Complex, where PM Modi inaugurated several projects.

In his speech he also showered praise on the PM for having the “guts” and delivering on the electoral promise of scrapping Article 370 removing special powers for Kashmir. Thackeray, however, reminded the PM of other long standing promises, of building a Ram Temple in Ayodhya and implementation of an uniform civil code. Thackeray said that he was confident that like Article 370, PM Modi would also deliver on these two promises.

“These are issues of pride and self respect for us. We have always been a strong country with a lot of promise but what we lacked so far was leadership. Now, we have a Prime Minister like Modi to give the nation that direction and vision,” said Thackeray.

The allies are yet to spell out the seat sharing formula for the upcoming Assembly polls. While the two partners have decided to keep 18 seats out of the 288 for their smaller allies; there is disagreement over the splitting of seats between the two. Sena wants an equal number of seats to be split between the two, but BJP is keener on a slightly bigger share given their performance in 2014 polls and the recent 2019 Lok Sabha results.