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Raut taunts BJP over ‘disastrous’ performance in Delhi elections

Shiv Sena leader Sanjay Raut on Sunday taunted the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for its “disastrous performance” in the Delhi Assembly elections, claiming that the

Published on: Feb 17, 2020, 24:58:55 IST
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Shiv Sena leader Sanjay Raut on Sunday taunted the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for its “disastrous performance” in the Delhi Assembly elections, claiming that the duo of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union home minister Amit Shah is not invincible and other political parties can take lessons from the poll results.

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HT Image

Raut, in his weekly column ‘Rokthok’ in the party mouthpiece Saamana, said the BJP’s raking up of the Ram temple issue did not help it. “When the BJP realised that it will face defeat in Delhi, it almost brought Lord Ram to the field. When the Lok Sabha [parliamentary] proceedings were going on, Modi announced the Ram Mandir trust and announced the intention to build the temple. However, this did not cut ice with the voters,” he wrote in his column.

The Sena leader wrote that the BJP tried to give a “communal colour to the anti-Citizenship [Amendment] Act [CAA] campaign and tried to paint the elections as a Hindu-Muslim contest”. “Here also they failed as the BJP faced defeat even in Hindu dominated areas,” Raut wrote in the column, adding, “It is said that Arvind Kejriwal, the follower of Lord Hanuman, brought ‘Ram Rajya’ to Delhi.”

The Sena has been one of the most bitter critics of the BJP ever since it snapped all ties with the party as the latter refused to share the chief minister’s post after the Maharashtra Assembly polls. The Sena then dumped the BJP and tied up with its opponents, the Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), to form a government led by its chief, Uddhav Thackeray.

In his column, Raut also shared his experience of his visit to the Tashkent airport in Uzbekistan when two Indians living there remarked that the “BJP’s balloon was slowly rupturing and even Lord Ram was refusing to bail them out”. The article praised Kejriwal, saying his government really carried out developmental works in its last tenure.

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