Nagpur Zilla Parishad polls: Nitin Gadkari says the Shiv Sena-Congress-NCP coalition is winning inappropriately

Union minister and senior BJP leader Nitin Gadkari said Friday that Maharashtra’s alliance between the Shiv Sena, Congress and the NCP was just for the sake of power and cautioned the three parties that state people did not like such “unnatural alliances.” He was addressing a rally on January 7 in Nagpur for the Zilla Parishad elections.

Gadkari said the Uddhav Thackeray-led party had betrayed the Hindutva ideology, hitting out at the Sena for breaking the ten-year-old alliance with the BJP over the sharing of the chief ministerial post.

In the October polls, the BJP and Sena had come up with 161 seat joints in the 288-member assembly, but the latter moved out and formed a government with Congress and NCP ideologically opposed.

“There has never been any similarity between the Sena ideology and the Congress and NCP ideology. These parties have come together only to gain power. Parties that couldn’t stand shoulder to shoulder are now walking, “he said.

“But it is the history of Maharashtra that people here never liked such unnatural alliances. Balasaheb Thackeray spoke of Hindutva, but now the Sena is only doing it for the sake of the tag, “he added.

By handing them a crushing defeat in the ZP elections, he asked the crowd to express their discontent with the “improper coalition.”