Sanjay Raut out to finish off Shiv Sena on orders of NCP chief, says rebel MLA

This is not a rebellion but a fight for Shiv Sena’s self-esteem, says Deepak Kesarkar 

Denying that they had staged a “rebellion”, the Shiv Sena MLAs led by Minister Eknath Shinde, who are currently camping in Assam, on Monday launched a blistering attack on Sena MP Sanjay Raut, accusing him of finishing off the party allegedly on the orders of Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief Sharad Pawar.

The dissident MLAs claimed that they were fighting for the preservation of the party’s “self-esteem”.

In a strongly-worded open letter which he posted on Twitter, Sena MLA Deepak Kesarkar, who is the Minister of Sindhudurg district, said it was only because of the vitriol spewed on the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Prime Minister Narendra Modi by Mr. Raut that the chasm between the two parties had widened.

“It is unfortunate that the party is being run on Sanjay Raut’s advice … a person who has not been elected by the people is set-out to finish off the party. You may distance us from the BJP. But if you distance the Shiv Sena from ‘Hindutva’, then how do you expect us to tolerate this?” Mr. Kesarkar said in the letter.

With the majority of the 55 Sena MLAs siding with Mr. Shinde, the Uddhav Thackeray-led faction on Monday had taken the offensive against the rebel MLAs.

Mr. Raut vented spleen on the Shinde camp, calling them “living corpses” who would be sent to a mortuary for post-mortem on their return from the Assam capital of Guwahati.

The controversial statement by the Rajya Sabha member provoked Mr. Kesarkar’s letter, which categorically blamed Mr. Raut for compelling the MLAs to take such a decision while castigating him as the NCP’s “blue-eyed boy”.