Mumbai: Two days after abstaining from the no-trust vote against the Narendra Modi government, Uddhav Thackeray has said that he won’t let anyone shoot from the Shiv Sena’s shoulders.
In a teaser of an interview released on Sunday, Thackeray said that his party had supported its ally openly in the past and will now oppose openly too.
While the BJP and the Sena have been at loggerheads for a while now, Uddhav’s decision to ask his 18 MPs to not support the BJP in Friday’s showdown in Lok Sabha has signaled that the alliance has now reached a breaking point.
Adding to the snub in Parliament was the praise the party lavished on Congress chief Rahul Gandhi for his no-holds barred attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The party’s mouthpiece Saamna splashed a picture of Gandhi hugging Modi, and the headline read, “Brother, you have won us over”.
The full interview that was taken by party leader Sanjay Raut on Friday, the day of the no-confidence motion, will be released Monday and even holds the potential to wreck the coalition government in Maharashtra.
According to sources, Thackeray was peeved by how the BJP tried to get its support for the no-confidence motion. Party sources said that the whip, which was “mistakenly” issued asking MPs to vote for the government and was later withdrawn, was actually a BJP ploy.
Upset over this, Thackeray had decided to abstain, sources said. .
Reports had also claimed that BJP chief Amit Shah had dialled Thackeray to convince him, but top Sena sources denied it.
“It is true that Amit Shah called him several times. The day of no-confidence motion itself, there were at least five calls. But Uddhavji did not receive any of those calls,” a senior Shiv Sena leader told News18.
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