india

Updated: Jun 23, 2019 00:50 IST

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) indicated on Saturday that it will continue to remain the big brother in the saffron alliance with Shiv Sena in Maharashtra, and hold on to the chief minister’s post after the Assembly elections later this year.

In a state-level meeting, the party sounded off the poll bugle, with the slogan ‘Phir Ek Baar Shivshahi Sarkar’, after BJP leaders said the saffron alliance will aim to get a 200-plus tally in the 288-seat Assembly.

“After the Lok Sabha polls, we are the big brother, and the general expectation is that the next chief minister will be from BJP,” said state water resources minister Girish Mahajan.

“During the polls, we helped the Shiv Sena on certain seats and now we plan to strengthen our booth-level organisation across 288 constituencies,” he said, who is considered to be close to CM Devendra Fadnavis.

The BJP’s election campaign is likely to start in August, with a development yatra led by Fadnavis across all assembly constituencies.

At Saturday’s closed-door meeting, which was attended by Fadnavis, Union minister Raosaheb Danve, district chief, MPs and legislators, party leaders reiterated that they will contest the polls in alliance with Sena and the saffron combine will together form the government in Maharashtra.

The message, party leaders said, was that the BJP must work for a victory in all 288 seats and not just those on which it contests. “We have been told [by Amit Shah] that you have to try and win every seat. Don’t worry about who will be there in the cabinet and who will be the CM after the polls. We are focussing on the election work,” said revenue minister Chandrakant Patil, at a press conference after the meeting. “The CM’s yatra is aimed at taking the work done by our government in the past five years to the people and seek their blessings ahead of the polls.”

Fadnavis, too, tweeted after the meeting, highlighting how they discussed the “future road map”. “We are here for politics of performance! Decisiveness is our strength; we are not for populist measures, but working hard on actual delivery system. And only by this, we are able to gain confidence of people. We need to move forward with this direction and with more sustained efforts,” he tweeted.

Meanwhile, Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray, when asked about Mahajan’s statement, said people should not “poke their nose” in the issue. “We formed the alliance after BJP national president Amit Shah, chief minister Devendra Fadnavis and I reached a mutual understanding. No one else should poke their nose in this issue. There are several burning problems, especially those of farmers, and instead, the issue of who will become the CM has assumed importance,” said Thackeray.

The BJP and Sena came together ahead of the Lok Sabha polls, after bitter relations over the past four-and-a-half years. After the one-sided poll results, the Sena has mellowed down and both parties have put up a united front. However, the issue of the chief minister’s post remains a bone of contention, with the Sena claiming that the tenure of the CM’s post will be split equally between the allies.