Sanjay Raut

While the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) may be winning hearts across the country, its staunchest, and perhaps loudest critic, is its own ally —the Shiv Sena. The party at the Centre, which first joined hands with the Sena in 1989 when the late Bal Thackeray was party chief, has had a good run with the saffron party — the Sena-BJP government was formed in the state in 1995 and in the 2012 BMC elections, they had a seat sharing pact where Sena got 75 seats of the total 135 it contested.

It now seems to be all over, however. Last week, after a third round of seat-sharing talks for the upcoming BMC polls failed — Sena wanted to give BJP a mere 60 seats out of 227, which the BJP that currently rules the BMC with 32 seats, refused to accept. Sena had come down hard and heavy on Prime Minister Narendra Modi post demonetisation. On Thursday, Sena chief, Uddhav  Thackeray, cut off his party's 20-year-old ties with the BJP, calling the party a "wild bull" and accusing it of harbouring goons and caring only about power.

Yet, what was missing was vitriol against BJP's chief minister in the state, Devendra Fadnavis. Perhaps, because if plans don't run smoothly, it will be Fadnavis who is likely to broker a deal between the two parties. Sena's Member of Parliament (Rajya Sabha) and editor of the party mouthpiece Saamana, Sanjay Raut, says these BMC polls will prove who the more powerful of the two is.

Edited excerpts from an interview.
 
Was the BJP-Shiv Sena's 1980s alliance an emotional one?
The late Shiv Sena supremo Balasaheb Thackeray and senior BJP leaders like Atal Behari Vajpayee, L K Advani and the late Pramod Mahajan shared a strong bond. The alliance was then inked merely on points of Hindutva and working towards a 'Congress Mukt Bharat', which even today's gen-next BJP leaders are talking about.