leaving no room for a possible reconciliation with his party’s senior ally ahead of the 2019 lok Sabha polls, Shiv Sena president Uddhav Thackeray on Tuesday spewed more venom at the BJP, saying that “the 2014 poll mandate was not a mistake on the part of the people but a fraud committed on the voters of the country”.
Within days after BJP’s national president Amit Shah exhorted his party workers to prepare themselves to go it alone in the 2019 lok Sabha and Assembly polls in the State, Thackeray revealed that his party decided to share power with the BJP in the State out of sheer helplessness and expressed confidence that his party would come to power in future on its own strength.
In the second installment of a three-part interview published in the Sena’s official mouth-piece “Saamana”, Thackeray questioned the very 2014 lok Sabha poll mandate, when he said he did not agree that it was a mistake on the part of the people to have voted BJP to power, but it was a “fraud” on the people in the country.
Asked if the 2014 mandate was a “mistake”, Thackeray said: “No. I do not think so. It was in fact a fraud on the people..... We would have been left shouting on the road, had we not shared power with the BJP. Because, the BJP went onto capture power in State after State by poaching elected representatives from other parties and it would have formed a Government in our State on its own as well by poaching into parties like the Congress and NCP. I decided to give some experience to our people in administration to my people (by joining the Government)”.
Indirectly accusing the BJP of making excessive use of money to win elections and capture power, Thackeray said: “If we had known, we would have also amassed so much of money. We would like to ask these people as to from where they get so much of money (to spend on elections). My father and the late Sena chief disapproved this kind of democracy... Hence the democracy that is bought through money is not democracy (lokshahi) but it is thailishahi (democracy of money bags)”.
Reiterating his opposition to the use of Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) in polls, Thackeray said: “There is continued suspicion about EVMs. Can the EVMs be managedIJ Whether EVMs can be managed or not, but I had spoken about it during the recent graduates’ election. In that election, ballot papers were used. In the elections held using ballot papers, we would know at some stage later that which way a particular vote went. But in an EVM, once the button is pressed, light gets ignited. But, we would not get to know to whom vote got registered.”