Sir — Instead of going quietly into the night, the ever-shrinking partner of big brother BJP in Maharashtra, the Shiv Sena, has decided to fight for its space in Maharashtra. It was a long time coming, and now the cat is out of the bag. After all, cracks in the BJP-Shiv Sena alliance have been surfacing repeatedly over the last few years. Ever since the BJP claimed the pole position in Maharashtra politics, winning 23 seats in the 2014 lok Sabha to the Shiv Sena’s 18 , the latter has been sulking. Breaking with the BJP in the Assembly poll last year and going it alone, the Shiv Sena won only 63, while the BJP nearly won a majority on its own with 122 seats. Even in the civic elections that followed the Assembly poll, barring Thane, the BJP did better than the Shiv Sena.
If once listens carefully one can hear the BJP saying: Good riddance. The Shiv Sena’s decision to break with the BJP raises but only one question: Why wait till 2019, why not immediatelyIJ After all people want governance, not a daily installment of a variation of the ‘saas-bau’ tamasha.