 "Uddhav Thackeray, Loktantra Bachao")
Bharatiya Janata Party's in-charge for Maharashtra, Dinesh Sharma, on Tuesday said the kind of Hindutva that the Shiv Sena (UBT) workers expect it to stand for is no longer practised by the Uddhav Thackeray-led party but by the BJP.
Speaking to reporters here, he said Uddhav Thackeray cheated the BJP after the 2019 Maharashtra assembly polls by joining hands with the Congress, and changed the stand from being a pro-Hindutva party to being an anti-Ram temple party. "The kind of Hindutva that the Shiv Sena (UBT) workers expect it to have is followed by the BJP. It is no longer practised by the Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena, which aligned with the Congress. It is the same Congress that once rejected the existence of Ram Lalla in Ayodhya," the BJP's Rajya Sabha member said.
Sharma claimed that the upcoming Lok Sabha elections revolved around Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Ayodhya Ram temple issue.
"This election is all about Modi and Lord Ram. I attended a meeting, where women told me that they want to elect the one who brought Ram Lalla back to the temple," he said. Sharma, a former deputy chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, said, "The BJP has a proper chain of command, and there is no confusion about leadership or seat-sharing with allies. The Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) in Maharashtra comprises mostly family-run parties, and they are struggling for their existence in this election. The MVA constituents are scattered, and there is no coordination among them." He also expressed satisfaction that the Prakash Ambedkar-led Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi (VBA) was contesting the parliamentary elections independently.
"The Congress had defeated late Dr B R Ambedkar twice and restricted him from coming to Parliament. It is doing the same thing with his grandson Prakash Ambedkar," Sharma alleged. He also hit out at the Nationalist Congress Party (SP) led by Sharad Pawar, saying that it was not a nationalist but an opportunistic party.
"At this age, Pawar should have stepped down and taken 'sanyas' (renunciation), but he refuses to do so," Sharma said.
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