Sena vows to expose BJP’s ‘fraud’

IANS/MumbaiThe Shiv Sena yesterday threatened to expose the “fraud” committed by its one-time ally Bharatiya Janata Party.“They (BJP) want to know who our real enemy is? The Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party are like dead snakes and pose no threat to us,” the party said in a scathing article in the party mouthpiece Saamana a day ahead of assembly elections in Maharashtra.“It is our one-time friend’s ‘fraud’ we shall expose before the people of Maharashtra. It is our duty,” the article said, referring to the BJP.In a clear reference to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other BJP leaders, the Sena said the Gujaratis of Gujarat descended on the state and tried to mislead the Gujarati population in Maharashtra.However, the loyalty of Gujaratis of Maharashtra was with the ideals of the party’s late patriarch Bal Thackeray and they would not desert the Shiv Sena, it said.“The BJP made it a mission to defeat the Shiv Sena. The country’s prime minister, his cabinet ministers, MPs and others descended with their ‘army’ here. We installed them at the Centre to defeat Pakistan, but now they are bent on uprooting the party (Sena) which adopted a strong stand against (Pakistan),” the article said, calling the BJP’s action regretful.Saamna blasted Goa Chief Minister Manohar Parikkar for giving homilies on Marathi pride. “What about his pre-election promise of making Marathi a state language of Goa? After the elections, he threw (the promise) into the dustbin.”The paper pointed out how former Karnataka chief minister B S Yeddyurappa, the man who committed atrocities on Marathis and insulted the sacrifices of 105 martyrs killed in January 1960 during the Samyukta Maharashtra Movement in that state, was also roped in for the campaign. “Everybody in the BJP is playing their own vote bank politics.”Attacking Vinod Tawde, leader of the opposition in the Maharashtra Legislative Council and among the BJP chief minister hopefuls, the Sena accused him of coveting power for which he discarded the 25-year-old alliance between them.It objected to Tawde’s statement that regional parties stoked flames of “self-respect” as a result of which development suffered.“Does it mean that all the BJP’s celebrations of its alliances with various regional parties in the recent past were a fraud and a false display of love (for smaller regional parties)?” the Sena asked.This was a clear indication that all these years, the BJP was using and looting regional parties for its own vested interests, the article said.“On one hand he (Tawde) speaks of constructing a magnificent memorial for Bal Thackeray and on the other they (BJP) want to reduce the importance of Mumbai and want to create Vidarbha out of Maharashtra.”The real memorial and tribute to Bal Thackeray would have been to continue the BJP-Sena alliance and preserve the unity of Maharashtra, the paper said.Meanwhile, the Election Commission has identified over 9,900 or nearly 10% of the 91,376 polling stations in Maharashtra as “hyper-sensitive.”Police and paramilitary forces will be deployed in the vicinity of these polling stations to prevent violence, officials said.The security will include over 35,000 state police personnel, 12 companies of State Reserve Police Force, 17 companies of Central Industrial Security Force, 11,500 Home Guards, Quick Response Teams, Flying Squads and others at the polling stations.The Election Commission, in its standard directives, has also banned the use of mobile phones within 100m from the polling stations. Political parties can set up their tables outside 200m with two chairs to help the voters.Even the media will be kept out of polling stations and any surveys or exit polls will be allowed to be released only after the polling hours end.Around 80.35mn voters are eligible to exercise their franchise from 7am to 6pm today to elect 288 representatives from among 4,119 candidates in the state.