Shiv Sena Takes On BJP Again

NEW DELHI: Governance is certainly not a cakewalk with the Bharatiya Janata party now battling opposition from within its allies. The Shiv Sena has attacked Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Fadnavis on farmers suicides, making it clear that even the uneasy alliance cannot be taken for granted.

In an editorial in Saama, the Shiv Sena maintains, “he (Fadnavis) was laying the red carpet in Davos (Switzerland) for foreign investors to Maharashtra, while farmers were killing themselves here... Any hopes of relief by the new government to the farmers have been belied.”

The Shiv Sena appears to have decided to follow its own independent line, taking a position for or against the BJP accordingly. The Saamna editorial pointed out that both the BJP’s CM and Finance Minister Sudhir Munghantiwar were from Vidarbha but had done little to alleviate the misery of the farmers who were still committing suicide. The editorial wanted to know that if the Finance Minister “can ban alcohol why can’t he end farmers suicides.” This is an emotive issue in Vidarbha,

Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray has not stopped pulling punches, and had recently ridiculed the BJP for not revoking Article 370 in Jammu and Kashmir despite its majority in the Lok Sabha. These remarks came at a time when the BJP has been trying to form a government in the state, in a coalition with the Peoples Democratic Party that will not allow it to raise the abrogation of Article 370 it had campaigned on in Jammu.

Thackeray who had chosen a path of direct confrontation with the BJP before the elections, and even after for a while has again hinted that matters are not going to be as smooth as expected. He made it clear that Maharashtra needed the Shiv Sena and said, “we are not logs that sail with the waves” in what seems to be a rather telling remark. At the time of joining the government he had said that being in coalition did not mean everything was alright. The Shiv Sena, Thackeray said, “will do its duty and if there is something wrong we will not hesitate to point it out.”

The BJP is not having a good run with its allies with the year fraught with headaches and animosity with regional allies. The multi-party alliance it had built with a Tamil Nadu coalition of one leader parties broke down when Vaiko decided to walk out on the Sri Lankan Tamil issue and what he felt was BJP’s over-insistence on the Hindi language. This has not been stitched back into shape since.

The BJP has created levels of unease in the Akali Dal ranks with local newspapers reporting murmurings that do not herald well for this alliance in Punjab. The drugs issue has become a simmering controversy between the two parties, with the Akali Dal incensed over BJP leaders comments on the ‘rampant’ drug problem in Punjab. A resurgent BJP is giving discomfort to the Akali Dal with the state units of the two parties particularly hostile to each other.