City BJP chief trains guns on Shiv Sena

Ironical and strange as it may sound, city BJP president and MLA Prakash Mehta in true ‘Gandhigiri’ style offered a bouquet of flowers to Zone 6 deputy municipal commissioner M R Marathe when he wanted to draw the civic administration’s attention towards the potholed roads in Ghatkopar and nearby eastern suburbs.

Speaking to DNA on Monday, Mehta admitted that though the Sena and BJP together held power in the BMC, the peaceful agitation was aimed at projecting the woes of the common man.

Another senior BJP leader said party leaders and activists offered a bouquet of flowers with a ‘Get Well Soon’ message to the ailing civic administration, which needed to be pulled out of the cratered roads in the suburbs.

Led by leader of party in BMC Bhalchandra Shirsat, Praveen Chedda and others, Mehta met the local civic officials to express their unhappiness over their apathy and draw their attention to the state of affairs.

However, the novel manner of the BJP agitation against the civic administration, which is ruled by its estranged saffron partner, itself has raised a eyebrows.

Though the saffron allies are engaged in a bitter cold war of words, the issue of snapping ties appears to have been put on hold, with senior party general secretary Gopinath Munde indicating the same.

Senior Sena MP Manohar Joshi too admitted that there was tension between the alliance partners. On the other hand, senior RSS ideologue M G Vaidya, too, in an recent article in a vernacular daily has advised the BJP leadership to break ties with the Shiv Sena.

However, a senior BJP leader dismissed reports appearing in a section of the press about the BJP trying to get cosy with Raj Thackeray’s Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) in a bid to forge a new alliance.