BOMBAY: The Shiv Sena has taken an unexpected but unilateral step to contest 600 scats in MP, Rajasthan Himachal Pradesh and Delhi, much to the consternation of its electorally in Maharashtra, the Bharatiya Janata Party.
However, the BJP has officially remained silent though there are Signs (hat it is rattled by this move which is keeping with the maverick style of BAL Thackeray who has made the party appear more: strident than the BJP in advocating Hindutva.
There is some explanation for Thackeray’s move, sources in the Shiv Sena say, to face the elections in areas where it has less than notional presence though the claims are made that these States have the party apparatus. If so, they are of a kind and not in the least a well-oiled poll machinery.
Thackeray apparently is irked that the BJP did not even discuss the electoral plans of the party with him and instead had been treating the Sena as though it did not count outside Maharashtra. In fact, there are doubts about the Sena’s electoral credibility now outside of Bombay and the regions around it.
Singhal had told correspondents recently at Nagpur that on Dec.6 at Ayodhya, the Sena cadres had not even arrived in time for the rally. “The rooms assigned to them were not even occupied till 10 a.m. that day,” He debunked the CBI claim that he had met Thackeray “to conspire with him to demolish” the structure.
All that was said between us Thackeray and I when we met in November last was that the Shiv Sena cadres could come to Ayodhya for the December 6 Kar Seva as kar sevaks and not Shiv Sainiks and that they would have to be amenable to the discipline of the organization Singhal said.
If the Sena’s intention to contest polls were known to him before the announcement then it would appear that Singhal was trying to take of being more Hindu than the BJP. But the Sena itself does not appear inclined to contest the polls on the religion platform.
Thackeray has reportedly cautioned Moreshwar Save, the lone Sena MP, who has been asked to handle election work in the North, that no speeches be made that would attract the scope of election laws that prohibit the use of such a platform, with the party having already had quite a few of its representatives unseated on the same grounds in Maharashtra.
Some within the BJP are inclined to acknowledge that this could be a long term use of Thackeray to increase his bargaining clout with: the BJP for the next round of polls in Maharashtra whenever they are held. This is also seen as needless pressure tactics.
Article extracted from this publication >> October 22, 1993
