Mumbai: After the Shiv Sena's debacle in the Assembly elections in Maharashtra, party supremo Bal Thackeray launched an emotional attack on the people of the state, saying they had let him down.
The wounded tiger has sent out an emotional roar to his people.
In a Saamna editorial Bal Thackeray says: "Mumbai's Maharashtrian people have stabbed the Shiv Sena in the back. I have lost faith in Marathi people and God. They have let down this party which has fought for them for 44 years. The Marathi asmita is not worth fighting for anymore."
Winning just 44 seats, the Shiv Sena has been pushed to the number four spot in the state this time around - behind the Congress, NCP and the BJP. The chief architect of that defeat is the estranged Thackeray - MNS Chief Raj - who destroyed the Shiv Sena's chances in several others.
The results of the Assembly elections held on October 13 gave the Congress 82 seats and the NCP 62 – totaling 144 in the 288-member Assembly. The Opposition alliance got a drubbing with only 90 seats, the Shiv Sena getting 44 and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) 46. The Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) got 13 seats.
Raj Thackeray said on Saturday, "They (Shiv Sena leaders) should be introspecting. It is very easy to blame others when you have been defeated, but that won't solve the problem."
And the people of the former Sena bastion of Dadar seem to agree. They say that Bal Thackeray is no longer in command of Shiv Sena and so the party's effect has gone down. Others say Raj Thackeray is more dynamic than Uddhav Thackeray while still more say that the Shiv Sena took the Marathi Manus for granted.
People feel that the way Raj Thackeray took up the Marathi issue was more effective and that he was likely to get a lot of support from the Marathi youth.
Mumbai Bureau Chief for Outlook, Smriti Koppikar says, "It is not the end for the Sena, but they have not taken the MNS seriously. They now need to figure out how to counter that.
But before reaching out to the Marathi Manus, what the Shiv Sena will have to do is to reach out to its own cadres and control the defections from the party to the MNS. That, political analysts predict, will begin happening soon.
Comments
0 comment