Wilting MVA in Maha, Sanjay Raut dares Cong to announce end of INDIA bloc

Mumbai, Jan 10 (IANS) Ahead of the local and civic body elections in Maharashtra, the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) or INDIA bloc appears to be wilting as leaders are now openly questioning each other.

Shiv Sena(UBT) MP Sanjay Raut on Friday said that after the Lok Sabha elections, the INDIA bloc meeting has not taken place which was not good. He dared the Congress party to announce that the INDIA bloc was restricted to the Lok Sabha elections and does not exist anymore.

Raut targeted the Congress party, being a big brother in the opposition bloc, saying that Mamata Banerjee, Tejashwi Yadav, Akhilesh Yadav and Omar Abdullah have already said that the INDIA Abloc does not exist anymore.

“If such feelings come into the minds of leaders of the alliance, then the Congress party, which is the biggest party in the alliance is a bloc. If the Congress party had taken a stand that the INDIA bloc was formed for the Lok Sabha elections then it should declare it. I tell you one thing if this alliance breaks, then this alliance will never be formed again,” he said.

Raut’s statement comes amid a chorus in Shiv Sena(UBT) to go solo in the upcoming elections to the BrihanMumbai Municipal Corporation elections. The MVA, which had won 31 seats in the Lok Sabha elections, failed to cross the 50 mark in the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly elections after the Mahayuti scored a landslide victory. Despite the drubbing, the MVA partners have not swung into action to keep the alliance alive to take on the Mahayuti in Maharashtra.

The NCP(SP) MP, Dr Amol Kolhe at the party meeting held on Thursday took a dig at Congress saying, “The Congress party's broken back is not ready to straighten out yet, while the Thackeray group is not ready to wake up from its slumber.”

He criticised Congress and Shiv Sena(UBT) for not starting fresh after the debacle in the Assembly elections and taking due initiatives for the Maha Vikas Aghadi to gear up for the ensuing local and civic body elections. “Shiv Sena and Congress have not yet shaken off their stagnation, so we, NCP(SP), will have to work from now on with new enthusiasm to revive and win the local and civic bod6 election,” he told the party workers. “We have Sharad Pawar who is fighting. Currently, there is a large vacuum left in the opposition, so those who survive will fight more aggressively,” said Dr Kolhe.

This is not all, the former leader of the opposition and a veteran Congress legislator Vijay Wadettiwar claimed that due to a lack of proper planning and strategy, the Maha Vikas Aghadi miserably failed to defeat the Mahayuti in the Assembly election. He did not name anyone but hinted that the differences and war of words between state Congress chief Nana Patole and Shiv Sena(UBT) MP Sanjay Raut, which became viral, did not go down well in the MVA and it took a long time for arriving at a seat-sharing agreement.

“During seat-sharing talks Nana Patole and Sanjay Raut were there, we were also there. Had the stalemate over the seat-sharing been resolved in two days, the MVA partners would have got poll planning and campaigning. We could not plan a joint programme for the elections with all three parties. There were many reasons for this. So this is one of the main reasons, the mess in seat allocation and the time spent on it affected the MVA’s poll prospects badly,” claimed Wadettiwar.

Wadettiwar replied to Dr Kolhe’s dig asking him to pay attention to his party’s functioning and give less advice to the Congress party. Raut shot back at Wadettiwar saying that he should probably know who caused it and how seat-sharing was delayed. “Be it Sharad Pawar, Jayant Patil or all of us Shiv Sena(UBT) leaders, it is true that the seat allocation was not completed till the last day of filing applications. If the seat allocation is delayed so much in any alliance, there is a sense of unease, the workers do not get time to work for poll management," said Raut.

On the contrary, the seat allocation was completed about two months ago in the Mahayuti, and even though their discussions were going on, the seat allocation was completed,” he said. “Vijay Vadettiwar's pain is the pain of the entire MVA. Mistakes were made. There was no need to delay the seat allocation process. Those mistakes should be accepted, we were saying that seats were distributed incorrectly in many places, but there is no point in discussing it now, he said. Even though Wadettiwar did not name anyone explicitly, but expressed and dropped hints about his own colleagues," Raut said.

When asked about the argument, he replied, "There was an argument between Nana Patole and me, Congress wanted more seats, and (in the elections) Congress got the least seats. They won fewer seats, we won 20 seats, but why argue about it now.”

Observers say that the disintegration of MVA due to a lack of unity and cohesiveness will come in quite handy for the Mahayuti to continue its victory march in the local and civic body elections.

(Sanjay Jog can be contacted at sanjay.j@ians.in)

Disclaimer: This story has not been edited by the Sakshi Post team and is auto-generated from syndicated feed.