Bengaluru: By ditching the pre-poll alliance with the BJP after the Maharashtra polls, the Shiva Sena, NCP and Congress formed an alliance to form a government in Maharashtra. 

Congress leader and Maharashtra Cabinet minister Balasaheb Thorat has now revealed that it was the Shiva Sena that approached the Congress first in order to keep the BJP at bay. 

“Sena took the first step in initiating the alliance between the parties. Congress is an ideological party, we were not sure if Sena would come along or not. So they took the initiative for keeping the BJP away from the government,” Balasaheb Thorat said, as reported by a popular website. 

“Sonia Gandhi was not sure about the alliance with Shiv Sena but when viewed with the possibility of another BJP government in Maharashtra and weighed against the alliance between Congress and Shiv Sena, what difference can it make. In this regard, it is worth noting that Shiv Sena has always backed the decisions taken by Congress. It backed Indira Gandhi. In 1980, Shiv Sena supported the Congress in the elections and then chief minister AR Antulay. Shiv Sena also backed Congress candidate Pratibha Patil for the post of President of India and later Pranab Mukherjee,” he added.

Uddhav Thackeray has openly been bootlicking and appeasing the Congress and NCP and has demolished the very ideology (Hindutva) his party once stood for.

Consider these instances:

1. Rahul Gandhi, the former AICC president, openly informed a gathering that he is not “Rahul Savarkar to apologise” in relation to the “Rape in India” comment. Shiva Sena did express its disappointment, but nothing beyond that.

2. As regards the Citizenship Amendment Bill, the Shiva Sena voted in favour of it in the Lok Sabha, but abstained from voting in the Rajya Sabha. The Congress and NCP are not in favour of the CAA. This move only exposes the Shiva Sena’s hypocrisy.
3. Shiva Sena also compared the CAA protests in Jamia Millia to what had happened during the Jallianwala Bagh.

4. Then, in what came as the last nail in the coffin, Uddhav Thackeray even compared what had happened on JNU campus was similar to what had happened during the 26/11 terrorist attack in Mumbai.

5. Lastly, a Congress booklet alleged that Veer Savarkar had a physical relationship with Nathuram Godse, Mahatma Gandhiji’s assassin.