Raj Thackeray and MNS are not BJP’s B-team: Chandrakant Patil

BJP Maharashtra chief accuses the MVA of creating a ‘false perception’

The ruling tripartite Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government was trying to create “a false perception” across Maharashtra that the Raj Thackeray-led Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) was functioning like the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) “B-team”, alleged BJP State president Chandrakant Patil on Wednesday.

Claiming that the MNS was “acting independently”, Mr. Patil further accused the MVA coalition, particularly the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and the Shiv Sena of attempting to create “a false echo” that Mr. Raj Thackeray’s regional party was acting at the BJP’s behest.

“The MVA has been trying hard to create this echo that the MNS is the BJP’s ‘B-team’. To establish this perception, one sees different NCP leaders like Jitendra Awhad, Ajit Pawar, Supriya Sule or the Shiv Sena’s Aaditya Thackeray making similar statements to this effect at different times. He is independent. He is neither the BJP’s ‘B-team’ nor anybody else’s. Tomorrow, Mr. Thackeray may well criticise us [the BJP] severely,” said the BJP State chief.

Following its rout in the 2019 Maharashtra Assembly election and its general decline in the State’s politics, the MNS had changed its ideological direction by veering towards Hindutva politics, signalled by Mr. Raj Thackeray’s adoption of a saffron flag incorporating Chhatrapati Shivaji’s royal seal or ‘Rajmudra’ in 2020. 

Since then, Mr. Raj Thackeray’s party has inched ever closer to the BJP in an attempt on the MNS’s part to seize the Hindutva space from the Shiv Sena, led by his estranged cousin and Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray, following the latter’s falling out with the BJP and subsequent alliance with the ideologically opposed NCP and the Congress. 

In his speech on the occasion of Gudi Padwa, the Marathi New Year, earlier this month, Mr. Raj Thackeray, continuing with his hard Hindutva line, caused a furore by demanding the MVA remove loudspeakers before mosques or else his MNS party workers would do so by force, and play the ‘Hanuman Chalisa’ in their stead.

On Tuesday, the MNS chief, in a similar address in Thane, reiterated his demand with an ultimatum to the MVA government to take down the loudspeakers before mosques by May 3.