Mumbai: Clearly incensed by the defection of six of seven Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) corporators to the Shiv Sena on Friday, party chief Raj Thackeray on Sunday launched a tirade against his cousin and Shiv Sena executive president Uddhav Thackeray, accusing him and his party of dirty politics.
Mr. Thackeray said, “The Shiv Sena will soon see the consequences of their actions. This is not what late Balasaheb [Thackeray] had taught us, and I will not forget this,” Mr Thackeray said on Sunday.
“Each corporator was paid ₹5 crore to defect. Where did the Sena get so much money from? This is exactly the kind of dirty politics due to which I left the Shiv Sena, and I told Balasaheb as much.”
On Friday, the MNS’s BMC corporators Archana Bhalerao, Parmeshwar Kadam, Ashwini Matekar, Dilip Lande, Harshal More and Dattaram Narvankar joined the Sena, while Dilip Turde alone stayed back. Their defection took the Sena’s numbers to 91 in the BMC, while dealing a severe blow to the MNS, which had seven corporators.
With the new joinings, the Sena has more corporators in the civic body than the BJP, which has 83 corporators in the BMC.
The defection came days after the BJP claimed it would soon emerge stronger than the Sena, in a reference to the latter’s candidate losing in the Bhandup bypoll. Mr. Thackeray claimed to having an inkling that his corporators were being convinced to defect. “What am I supposed to do if you want to put yourself up for sale? What is the point of trying to retain people who have already been corrupted?” he said.
Reacting to reports that he had sent the six corporators to the Sena, Mr. Thackeray said, “Had I wanted to do that, I would have sent all seven corporators, and not stopped at six.”
