Recently union home minister Amit
Shah visited Mumbai. During this visit, he clarified his stance regarding the
Shiv Sena. He reiterated that ‘Uddhav Thackeray’s leftover (Shillak) Sena had
betrayed the Bharatiya Janata Party after the 2019 elections. And now they will
not be pardoned’. Shah’s statement has immense political implications. The Shiv
Sena leadership, in 2019, had betrayed the BJP and joined hands with the
Congress-Nationalist Congress Party under the pretext that the BJP did not keep
its promise of handing over the chief ministerial position to the Shiv Sena for
two-and-a-half years. To prove their statement, the Shiv Sena leadership time
and again cited reference that during their so-called meeting at Matoshree,
Amit Shah, who was the then BJP president, was also present. Shri. Shah had, on
many occasions, publicly clarified that no such assurance was ever given to the
Shiv Sena by the BJP leadership.
Even after
betraying the BJP, the Shiv Sena leadership was not satisfied. Later the Shiv
Sena misused its power while being in the government and began implicating BJP
leaders and workers in false cases. Shah appealed all his party workers and
activists to confront the Sena leadership in future. As expected, the Sena
leadership is unable to accept this challenge. The BJP leadership had always
shown the decency and taken a step behind to retain its alliance with the Shiv
Sena. But the Shiv Sena conveniently betrayed the BJP. Still the Sena
leadership hopes that the BJP leadership will forget what had happened in the
past and will once again join hands with them. The Bharatiya Janata Party since
1989, considering the issue of Hindutva, had always taken a backseat even when
it was regarding seat allocation with the Shiv Sena. On this occasion, it thus becomes
pertinent to take you down the memory lane and understand the alliance between
both the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Shiv Sena.
The alliance
that was formed between the BJP and the Shiv Sena during the 1984 Lok Sabha
elections was short-lived. In 1989, the BJP-Shiv Sena leaderships announced an
alliance based on the Hindutva agenda. At that time, a simple formula was
arrived at – the BJP will act like the Big Brother during the seat allocation
for the Lok Sabha elections, whereas the Shiv Sena will be the Big Brother
during the seat allocation for the Legislative Assembly elections. Since the
past few years, Uddhavrao Thackeray kept cribbing that they got rotten in the
alliance with the BJP. Recently, Uddhavrao has also mastered the art of
narrating history that will only favour him, conveniently forgetting certain
crucial details and constantly reiterating false information. Let me remind you
some facts that have been conveniently forgotten, some crucial details – even
before your party was born, we had corporators and MLAs in Mumbai. In 1984, the
Shiv Sena had contested the Lok Sabha elections on the BJP’s symbol, not on
Shiv Sena’s symbol. Also, Manohar Joshi who later became the chief minister of
Maharashtra, had contested the 1984 Lok Sabha elections on BJP’s symbol. During
the same election, Vamanrao Mahadik had also contested on the BJP’s symbol. The
Bharatiya Jana Sangh was founded in 1951. We were already in mainstream
politics for 15 years before even the Shiv Sena was born.
In 1980,
after a split in the Janata Party, the Bharatiya Janata Party was formed. The
former chief minister and his advisors need to study how the Jana Sangh grew
since its formation in 1951 till 1975, how far did the BJP reach since its
inception in 1980 till today vis-à-vis how far the Shiv Sena has progressed
since 1966. Till 1990, the Shiv Sena had no presence beyond Mumbai, Thane and
Aurangabad. Owing to the death of BJP’s senior leader and former MP Rambhau
Mhalgi, there was a by-election in 1982 for the Thane Lok Sabha constituency.
During this election, the Shiv Sena had supported a Congress candidate. But
still, BJP’s Jagannath Patil won this election. I wish to deliberately mention
here that without any support from the Shiv Sena, we had still bagged this
crucial Thane seat. In politics, such alliances are inevitable. Both the
parties in alliance have to suffer the good and bad consequences of such
alliances. Uddhavrao must be only expecting that he gets all the benefits from
such alliances whereas the partner in alliance suffers the losses. And probably
that is why Uddhavrao must have made such a harsh statement that ‘we rotted in
alliance with the BJP’.
In 1990,
during seat allocation in the Assembly elections, Shiv Sena Supremo and Hindu
Hriday Samrat Balasaheb Thackeray had asked the BJP leadership for the
Shivajinagar constituency in Pune. Balasaheb wished that at least one Shiv Sena
MLA gets elected from Pune district. BJP’s candidate Anna Joshi had won two
consecutive terms from Shivajinagar constituency both during 1980 and 1985.
With a broader perspective of retaining alliance with the Shiv Sena, the BJP
did not think twice before handing over its stronghold seat in Pune. Till 2014,
this constituency remained with the Sena. In 2014, after having to contest independently
since the alliance broke, the BJP once again won this
constituency.
It may be recalled that the Thane Lok Sabha constituency that was won by the
BJP despite the Shiv Sena being in opposition, was taken back by the Sena
leadership during the 1996 elections. The BJP leadership handed over even this
rightful constituency to the Shiv Sena. The same happened in Nashik as well.
The BJP left even this Lok Sabha constituency on request from venerable
Balasaheb Thackeray.
During that
time, a seat sharing ratio – 171 seats of the Legislative Assembly to be
retained by the Shiv Sena and 117 seats by the BJP was decided. However, since
1999, the number of seats won by the Sena out of the 171 contested seats
gradually began decreasing. In 2009, the Sena got 45 seats whereas the BJP got
46 seats. During the 2014 Assembly elections, the Sena leadership that broke
the alliance for merely 2 seats, did not show the courtesy to realise that its
strength in the state is gradually diminishing. Even then the BJP leadership
showed the understanding and again tried to strike an alliance with the Sena
during the 2019 elections. Even Maharashtra witnessed how this costed the BJP
leadership. Credibility is always important in politics.
The Bharatiya
Jana Sangh had formed an alliance with the Akali Dal in 1967. This alliance was
intact until 2020, when the Akali Dal broke the alliance. During the 2020 Bihar
Assembly elections, despite BJP bagging maximum seats as compared to Nitish
Kumar’s Janata Dal (United), the BJP sacrificed and gave the chief ministerial
position to Nitish Kumar. Still the Janata Dal (United) broke the alliance with
the BJP. In 2007, Kumaraswamy had also betrayed the BJP and refused to resign
from the position of Karnataka’s chief minister. There isn’t a single case of
betrayal done by the Bharatiya Janata Party to any of its allies. And hence,
Amit Shah clarified the party’s position in unequivocal terms to remove any
kind of confusion in the minds of BJP workers and activists. He reiterated that
the betrayers, who first broke alliance for their vested interests and later
misused power and implicated BJP leaders in false cases, must be given a
befitting reply.
Before I
conclude, let me remind that in 2014 the BJP had bagged 15 seats, one seat more
that the Shiv Sena from Mumbai in the Assembly elections. Also, during the 2017
Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation elections, the BJP had won 82 seats as
against 84 seats of the Sena. I sincerely hope Uddhavrao considers these
statistics before making any comment against the BJP.
(Article Pre-Published in Times of India - Online, 12 September 2022)
Keshav
Upadhye, chief spokesperson
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