MUMBAI: Union home minister and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Amit Shah on Monday set a target of 150 seats for the BJP-Eknath Shinde group alliance in the upcoming elections to the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), which has a strength of 227 seats.
Shah was in Mumbai to pay his respects at the Lalbaugcha Raja at Parel.
Asking party workers not to countenance the kind of “betrayal” the BJP had suffered after the Shiv Sena — which fought the 2019 assembly elections as part of the saffron alliance — joined hands with the NCP and the Congress, Shah said the BJP would have an alliance with CM Eknath Shinde’s faction for the Mumbai civic elections.
In the 2017 elections to the 227-member BMC, the BJP had won 82 seats, just two seats behind the Shiv Sena.
Shah charged Shiv Sena president Uddhav Thackeray with betraying Shiv Sena founder Balasaheb Thackeray’s ideology, Hindutva, PM Narendra Modi, Devendra Fadnavis and the voters who had voted for the BJP-Sena alliance.
Shah was in Mumbai to pay his respects at the Lalbaugcha Raja at Parel.
Asking party workers not to countenance the kind of “betrayal” the BJP had suffered after the Shiv Sena — which fought the 2019 assembly elections as part of the saffron alliance — joined hands with the NCP and the Congress, Shah said the BJP would have an alliance with CM Eknath Shinde’s faction for the Mumbai civic elections.
In the 2017 elections to the 227-member BMC, the BJP had won 82 seats, just two seats behind the Shiv Sena.
Shah charged Shiv Sena president Uddhav Thackeray with betraying Shiv Sena founder Balasaheb Thackeray’s ideology, Hindutva, PM Narendra Modi, Devendra Fadnavis and the voters who had voted for the BJP-Sena alliance.
Addressing party workers and the elected representatives of Mumbai at Meghdoot (a government bungalow) on Malabar Hill, he urged party workers not to tolerate betrayal.
“In politics one can take an insult but not betrayal,” said Shah, asking them to defeat the ruling Sena in the BMC polls.
Shah said he had not done anything wrong and reiterated that he had never promised the chief minister’s post to the Shiv Sena.
“In his greed for power, he (Uddhav Thackeray) broke the alliance and sat with those who have no ideology. In 2014 he broke the alliance for only two seats,” he said while attacking Thackeray.