Suggesting the Bharatiya Janata Party's way forward in Maharashtra in the run-up to the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, state party chief Chandrashekhar Bawankule on Friday said that all doors of the BJP are now shut for Uddhav Thackeray and further hinted that there are no possibilities of reconciling with him.
"All doors of the BJP are closed for Uddhav Thackeray. We are neither discussing anything with him nor will we do so in the future," Bawankule told reporters at the Nagpur airport.
BJP-Sena split:
The BJP and undivided Shiv Sena (before the 2022 rebellion) had contested the 2019 Maharashtra Assembly elections together. However, the two parties had parted ways after the declaration of the poll results following a rift over the chief ministerial chair. Uddhav Thackeray, the then aspirant of the chief minister's post had forged an alliance with his rival Congress and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and formed the Maha Vikas Aghadi government.
Eknath Shinde led a rebellion along with 39 other MLAs against Thackeray in June last year, resulting in the collapse of the government and the resignation of Uddhav Thackeray from the post. While Shinde became the chief minister, senior BJP leader Devendra Fadnavis was appointed as his deputy.
Bawankule slams KCR over 'Telangana model':
When asked about Telangana Chief Minister and Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) president K Chandrasekhar Rao's allegation made in Nagpur on Thursday that Maharashtra witnesses most suicides by farmers, Bawankule said that the BJP will soon release a video about the flaws in the 'Telangana model' and what KCR was saying and doing.
On former MLA Ashish Deshmukh, who is set to join the BJP on June 18, Bawankule said, "Deshmukh told the BJP that he is not keen on fighting the upcoming polls to the Maharashtra Assembly or the Lok Sabha and he wants to do the work of expanding the party base. He does not want to remain in the Congress as that party is anti-OBC."
Deshmukh, who was the BJP MLA from Katol in Nagpur district, had quit the saffron party and joined the Congress some years ago. Recently he was suspended from the Congress.
(With PTI inputs)
