A war of nerves broke out between the ruling Shiv Sena and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Sunday over the likely delay in the nomination of 12 members to the Maharashtra Legislative Council by Maharashtra Governor Bhagat Singh Koshyari.
In his Sunday column ‘Rokhtok’ in the Sena mouthpiece Saamna, Shiv Sena’s MP and spokesperson Sanjay Raut mildly ticked off the Opposing BJP by accusing it of playing politics every during the Covid-19 and trying to influence the “Union Home Ministry-nominated” Governor to delay the process of nominating 12 new members to the Upper House of State Legislature in place of equal number of outgoing legislators whose terms ended on June 15.
On his part, former chief minister and current leader of the Opposition Devendra Fadnavis of the BJP retaliated by advising the Shiv Sena to concentrate on addressing the Coronavirus crisis rather than bothering about the nomination of 12 legislators by the Governor.
“I feel that Sanjay Raut should not bother about the nomination of 12 persons to the State Legislature. Instead, he and the Shiv Sena should concentrate on Maharashtra and Corornavirus. The state government should think as to why Covid-19 patients were not being treated and what will happen to these patients. If the Sena was thinking about those issues, I would have been happy,” Fadnavis said.
Indirectly suggesting that the current Governor was not in a mood to nominate the 12 persons recommended by the Maharashtra Cabinet headed by chief minister Uddhav Thackeray, Raut wrote in his column: “The nomination of 12 members to the Council has become a topic for a hot debate in the state. Normally the Governor appoints experts from various fields as members of the Council based on the recommendation of the State Cabinet. If the nomination does not happen on time, such a thing would tantamount to trampling upon the Constitution and gagging of the State Council. This thing had happened during the Emergency”.
“Even today the BJP targets the Congress repeatedly by saying that by imposing Emergency in the country in the seventies, late Mrs Indira Gandhi took away the freedom of people and trampled upon the human rights of the citizens. “Even now the BJP observes June 25, 1975 (the day Mrs Gandhi imposed Emergency) as a black day.
“Union Home Minister Amit Shah says that “one family” ( Gandhi-Nehru family) had greed for power. That’s why she trampled upon the Constitution and took away the rights of the people by imposing Emergency. Amit Shah is the country’s Home Minister. He says the Constitution is not trampled upon, rights of Parliament and Legislatures are not taken. We congratulate him for that. Hence any delay in the nomination of 12 legislators would tantamount to scuttling freedom and gagging of the State Council like it happened during the Emergency,” the Sena spokesperson wrote in his capacity as Executive Editor of “Saamana”.
Raut said that Governor Koshyari had given clear indications that because of the Coronavirus crisis, he was not in favour of completing the nomination process immediately. “In effect, the nomination of 12 legislations will have to wait till October. The Opposition BJP does not want the Governor to nominate the 12 persons recommended by the Uddhav Thackeray Cabinet to the Council as members. That’s why the Opposition is trying to stretch the nomination process till October using the Governor’s office,” Raut said.
Raut said that in a public interview, Fadnavis had recently gone on record saying that the BJP was not interested in toppling the Sena-led Maha Vikas Aghadi government and that it would fall on its own due to “internal contradictions”. “Now that the BJP has realised it can not topple the government, it is creating all sorts of hurdles to the government; the latest hurdle being the nomination of 12 persons to the Council through the office of the Governor," Raut added.