The Shiv Sena?s challenge now is to reorient itself without the BJP and under the leadership of Uddhav Thackeray, something that has many critics within. The party plans to position itself on an electoral plank of Maharashtrian pride and as the only party working to maintain the territorial integrity if the state, but Sena leaders were clearly stunned by the snapping of ties.
Most of the seniors were out of contact, having gone into a huddle to assess and decide. A second-rung leader admitted, ?It is a major setback. We don?t know how to orient ourselves now. The Hindutva plank that sustained us so many years now gets shared between us and the BJP.?
Gleeful rivals assess it as the harshest test yet for Uddhav since he took over as party president. ?The Sena grew for so long because of the personal charisma of Balasaheb Thackeray,? an MNS leader said. ?Its success in the Lok Sabha polls was due to the Modi wave. Uddhav may be a good administrator but the jury is still out on whether he has it in him to pull his party out of such a tight corner.?
The Sena leadership, meanwhile, insisted it would pull through and said what had happened was, in fact, a blessing in disguise. ?We had to face it sooner than later. We will now go all out basing our campaign on Maharashtra?s asmita and the development plan shown by Uddhav saheb,? MP Arvind Sawant said.
Sawant said the party will tell people who the people interested in breaking Maharashtra are and who want to maintain the state?s unity. The BJP supports a separate state of Vidarbha being carved out of Maharshtra. ?Now is the time people will realise who stands for Maharashtra?s asmita and who does not,? Sawant said.
The Sena leadership has also started suggesting that the BJP had a deal running with the NCP all along. ?The BJP tried to defame us with the CM?s post issue,? Sena MP Anandrao Adsul said. The BJP has been saying the post was all that the Sena was interested in. ?We made all the compromises,? Adsul said. ?Show us what the BJP did.?