Two days after West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee wrote to leaders of political parties to come together to fight the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Shiv Sena parliamentarian Sanjay Raut said that the formula used by his party, along with the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and Congress in Maharashtra, should be emulated in the country. The Sena leader called the Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi (MVA), an “ideal government”, where the three ideologically different parties came together to form a ruling coalition in the state.
“MVA is such an experiment in the country’s political history that all non-BJP parties should learn something from. The Congress, NCP and Shiv Sena, which are three ideologically different parties, are running the government for the past one-and-a-half years, and I think it is an ideal government. Such an alliance through the UPA (United Progressive Alliance) should be created. Banerjee has suggested the same. Maharashtra has shown a new direction to country’s politics. What Maharashtra has shown must be emulated at the national level,” Raut said while speaking to reporters in Mumbai.
In the letter, written on March 28, Banerjee said BJP wants to make it “impossible for non-BJP parties to exercise their constitutional rights and freedoms”.
“It wants to dilute the powers of state governments and downgrade them to mere municipalities. In short, it wants to establish a one-party authoritarian rule in India,” her letter said.
Referring to the Centre’s National Capital Territory of Delhi (Amendment) Bill, which was recently passed in both houses of the Parliament an “extremely grave” development, Banerjee said that the Centre wants to snatch away power of a democratically elected government in Delhi.
{{/usCountry}}Referring to the Centre’s National Capital Territory of Delhi (Amendment) Bill, which was recently passed in both houses of the Parliament an “extremely grave” development, Banerjee said that the Centre wants to snatch away power of a democratically elected government in Delhi.
{{/usCountry}}Raut said that Maharashtra has shown the direction, and now an MVA-like alliance at the national level under the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) should be formed. He said that it is “crucial” for opposition parties to come together to address the challenges addressed by Banerjee in the letter.
“All the opposition leaders must sit together and find a way. After the Emergency in 1975, Jayprakash Narayan brought all opposition parties together, but unfortunately there is no such leader today,” he said.
The Sena mouthpiece Saamana on Friday also wrote that though Banerjee has written for all parties to unite, her Trinamool Congress and the Congress party are contesting against each other in the ongoing West Bengal Assembly elections.
“In reality, Trinamool Congress and Congress are not hand in hand, but against each other in the West Bengal election. Therefore, the opposition should have started uniting from Kolkata. But if Banerjee thinks everybody should come together after BJP’s attack [during the campaign] in West Bengal, we respect the sentiments,” the editorial read.