With speculation rife of his party forging a pre-poll alliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) chief Raj Thackeray late Monday reached Delhi, where he is expected to meet with the BJP top brass, said sources.
As per sources, Mr. Thackeray, along with his son, MNS leader Amit Thackeray, left for Delhi today – his second visit to the capital in a week. Mr. Thackeray, the estranged cousin of Shiv Sena (UBT) chief Uddhav Thackeray, is expected to meet Union Home Minister Amit Shah.
The BJP, too, is having a meeting of its core committee to iron out thorny seat-sharing disputes, with Maharashtra BJP leader Devendra Fadnavis present on the occasion.
The MNS’ potential alliance with the BJP has long been on the cards despite Raj Thackeray remaining noncommittal over the issue in his public rallies.
Despite the MNS not having a single MLA or MP across Maharashtra, the BJP hopes to make use of Mr. Thackeray’s still extant Marathi-speaking vote-bases in the Mumbai, Thane, Pune and Nashik civic bodies.
The MNS had notched up impressive performances in the 2012 polls to the Pune and Nashik civic bodies at a time when Mr. Raj Thackeray was considered a potent force in Maharashtra’s politics.
Since then, internal bickering and haphazard campaigning have caused the party to implode.
Mr. Thackeray’s decline and fall commenced with the MNS’ twin debacles in the 2014 parliamentary and assembly elections which left the party in utter disarray, with the slide continuing through the 2017 civic election as well as the 2019 State and General elections.
Following its rout in the 2019 Maharashtra Assembly election, the MNS had changed its ideological direction by veering towards ‘Hindutva’ politics, signalled by Mr. Thackeray’s adoption of a saffron flag incorporating Chhatrapati Shivaji’s royal seal or ‘Rajmudra’ in 2020.
Since then, the MNS has inched ever closer to the BJP in an attempt to seize the ‘Hindutva’ space from Uddhav Thackeray’s Shiv Sena (UBT) – the common adversary of CM Eknath Shinde’s rival Shiv Sena faction, the BJP, and the MNS.
Between 2022 and 2023, Mr. Raj Thackeray revived the loudspeaker issue, demanding that the Shinde-Fadnavis government dismantle loudspeakers playing the azaan from mosques else the MNS would be compelled to do so in their fashion.
