MUMBAI/PUNE/NAGPUR: A day after Jammu & Kashmir CM Omar Abdullah sought clarity on whether INDIA bloc had reached its expiry date, the alliance’s Maharashtra-specific version, MVA, on Friday seemed to implode into a blame game over its recent assembly election defeat.
Shiv Sena (UBT) MP Sanjay Raut said that now his party and other MVA constituents wanted to fight the upcoming municipal and zilla parishad polls independently. Congress MLA Vijay Wadettiwar echoed the sentiment.
NCP (SP) chief Sharad Pawar expressed displeasure over the failure of the MVA leadership to convene a meeting of constituent parties after the assembly results were declared and MVA suffered a crushing defeat. While Raut, whose party chief Uddhav Thackeray leads MVA, went so far as to say there was a question mark over the relevance of the alliance, Wadettiwar alleged a “big conspiracy” against his party.
Wadettiwar said the “unnecessary” MVA delay in finalising seats cost the Congress time to campaign. “Meetings were scheduled for 11am, but some leaders would turn up at 2pm. Discussions would drag on endlessly. And this triggers an obvious question whether these delays were part of a conspiracy, a bigger plan,” Wadettiwar said.
Raut hit back: “Who came late for the meeting is known to Wadettiwar. And maybe, if Congress had let go of some seats in Vidarbha then these discussions would not have dragged on endlessly. Congress’s central leadership did not act in time.”
Even NCP (SP) MP Amol Kolhe at an internal party meeting in Mumbai is said to have targeted both Congress and Sena (UBT). “Kolhe mentioned that Congress’s broken back has not yet straightened while Sena (UBT) is yet to get up from its slumber. Other members also blamed the lack of coordination by Congress and Shiv Sena during the assembly election campaign,” an NCP (SP) member said.
Wadettiwar, while reacting to queries from the media, advised Kolhe to “focus on his party rather than worry about Congress”. As with the INDIA bloc, the relevance of which Abdullah and others like RJD politician Tejashwi Yadav questioned in light of coordination issues and the tussle between constituents AAP and Congress in the Delhi assembly election, the MVA also seems to be disintegrating with hardly any meetings happening among its members. Raut blamed the Congress for lack of dialogue among coalition partners. Raut said the MVA was a constituent of the INDIA bloc formed on the eve of the Lok Sabha election, where its performance in the state was impressive. He said in the recent assembly election, where the INDIA bloc had no role, the MVA performance was dismal.
(With PTI inputs)
