Sans specific policy at top level, MNS party workers in disarray

WITH no clear policy at top level,the volunteers of Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) are in a confused state. At Nagpur level,some activities are going on, most of them non-political. But there is no politicalmovementin MNS visible. In Lok Sabha elections MNS Chief Raj Thackeray was busy in delivering speeches (Lav Re to Video), unofficially for the benefit of Congress and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP). When top leaders of all mainstream parties failed to attract the crowd, Rajsaheb’s speeches did wonder. He was the only crowd-puller speaker. His speeches and the gathering was such that Bharatiya Janata Party and Shiv Sena at one time felt they would lose some seats. Political analysts hadpredictedthe constituencies where Sena-BJP had to bite the dust.Nothing has taken place.

But the inclination of MNS towards Cong-NCP got clear. In his interview salso Thackeray clearly mentioned he did not care even if his speeches helped any party. During the whole Lok Sabha elections, no work remained for party volunteers except that raising some public issues. Raising public issues too was not done aggressively.Thoughlocalleaders of the party say, MNS would be contestingAssemblyelections,the picture is not very clear. Recently Raj Thackeray met senior Congress leader Sonia Gandhi. Thackeray only said the meeting was related to EVM issue where he was trying to garner the support of parties to oppose the use of the machine in coming elections. State General Secretary of the party,aknown face of Maharashtra Hemant Gadkari denied the issue of confusion.

“There is no disarray in the party.The views of Rajsaheb are very clear and his instructions to us are very much straight and simple.We are doing our work meticulously.There is every single issue related to people that we have been raising aggressively. In Lok Sabha elections we had no role to play as MNS had not fielded any candidate,” pointed out Gadkari. Ajay Dhoke, City President of the party said, “We have been asked by the party to meet public, hold meetings, try to know the issues being faced by thepeople. We will be con t e sting Assembly elections and we are preparing forthe same.” Some sources in the party said on condition of anonymity, “There is no preparation going on for Assembly elections. MNS did not have candidates to field even if they decide to do so. The picture about the candidates is also gloomy. Unlike NCP, BJP, we have not began the membership drive yet. Even the existence of our youth wing is notthat visible in University elections. We never had a single corporator in Nagpur Municipal Corporation.

There should be something that could attract people towards the party.” Calling all these things as rubbish, Gadkari said,“Unnecessary fuss is being made out of the meeting of Rajsaheb with Sonia Gandhi. It was the meeting regarding Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) and not beyond that. We will be contesting assembly elections. In Nagpur we have asked three seats and interested people have already approached us.” Recently Balasaheb Thorat, new President of Maharashtra Pradesh Congress Committee clearly said that his party would take MNS as an alliance partner. This is a big twist because Congress had been kept opposing MNS to become as an ally. NCP had never opposed MNS. Only thing that political pundits say about joining of MNS as Congress-NCP ally is, whether it would get upper hand over Wanchit Bahujan Aaghadi or not.