What is the Shiv Sena up to? For some time now, it has been in the midst of a blaze of bad publicity. It has launched brazen verbal attacks on high profile personalities and followed it up with vitriolic outbursts on several issues. The apparent madness clearly has a method. But does it have a motive too? The answer is yes.
Faced with the prospect of being pushed to the margins after the MNS usurped a chunk of its political space, the Shiv Sena is coming back to its street-fighting ways. Through its high-decibel campaign against almost everybody, it has managed to overshadow the MNS for the moment. The recent events have helped mobilise the low-spirited cadre too, besides drumming aloud the presence of the party among the target audience.
Till last week, the party was struggling to achieve its target of 10 lakh new members in the city. The ongoing protest against actor Shah Rukh Khan has helped the party boost its cadre strength. The protest has now spread beyond Mumbai and Thane to Pune, Nagpur, Aurangabad, Kolhapur, Solapur and Dhule.
The party had launched its membership drive on January 6. It was supposed to conclude on January 23, the birthday of Sena patriarch Bal Thackeray. However, even two weeks after the deadline, the party was well short of the target.
“It is obvious that a worker who tries hard to show his ‘efficiency’ will get a good post in the organisation,” a unit chief of the party said.
Sena leader Sanjay Raut said, “The fire in common sainiks was
always intact…The government deployed police everywhere to
protect the cinema halls. Still, our workers succeeded in stalling
advance booking.
