Mumbai: Devendra Fadnavis, who resigned from the chief minister’s post on Tuesday afternoon, launched a scathing attack on the Shiv Sena alleging that the Uddhav Thackeray-led party started making threats after realising its increased bargaining power due to the number game. While wishing good luck to Mr Thackeray and his new government, Mr Fadnavis also predicted that the Shiv Sena-Congress-NCP alliance would not last for long because of the “core differences” in all three parties.
“The BJP and Shiv Sena contested election as an alliance and we got a clear mandate from the people. The mandate was more in favour of the BJP as we won nearly 70 per cent of the seats that we contested. Shiv Sena managed to win just 40-42 per cent of the seats they contested. But as the results came out and the Sena realised that their bargaining power had increased, they began arm-twisting us over demands that were never agreed upon. Sena leaders stopped talking to us and started talks with the Congress and NCP,” Mr Fadnavis said in a press conference held to announce his resignation.
The BJP leader also questioned the sustainability of the government the three parties with varying ideologies were planning to form. The Sena-NCP-Congress government would be like an auto-rickshaw with its three wheels running in different directions, he said, predicting that it would be toppled soon.
“Three parties which are poles apart have come together for power. They claim that they have a common minimum programme, but keeping BJP out of the government is their only ‘common maximum programme’. I wish them good luck. But I also know that the Sena-Congress-NCP alliance will crumble soon under the pressure of their own core differences,” he said.
