Heena Sharma Blog

Prime Minister Narendra Modi convened a cabinet meeting on Tuesday, apparently to discuss the political situation in Maharashtra. The meeting was convened amid an ongoing political stalemate in the state where no party has been able to form the government so far after the assembly election last month. The prime minister is to leave for Brazil this afternoon to attend the BRICS summit.

Shiv Sena leader Sanjay Raut on Tuesday said Maharashtra's next chief minister will be from his party, as the deadlock to form a new government in state continued after election results on October 28. "The politics of Maharashtra is changing...in our fight for justice, we will win," said Raut, who is also a member of the Rajya Sabha. "The decision on Maharashtra will be taken in Maharashtra, the chief minister will be from the Shiv Sena," Raut said in Mumbai, ruling out a role for Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader Sharad Pawar. The Bharatiya Janata Party won 105 seats, its ally Shiv Sena 56, the NCP 54, and Congress 44 in the elections. The Shiv Sena has been demanding the chief minister’s post after elections gave the saffron alliance a combined seat strength of 161, way past the 145 majority mark in the 288-member House. Read More Article Source -> Business Standard

Few parties manage to stay relevant through a generational change. Shiv Sena is the exception. When it was formed, its founder Bal Thackeray saw it as forum to arouse the Maharashtrian-ness of those who lived in the state, making the Mangalorean, the North Indian, the Tamil, Telugu, and the Malayali the ‘other’. The Communists and the Congress were also targets of Marmik, a cartoon magazine Thackeray founded that poked fun at the outsiders and the meek Maharashtrians. It also gave an ideological cover for breaking the Communist-dominated trade unions in and around Mumbai's textile mills. But he soon found that the ‘Maharashtra for Maharashtrians’ slogan had limited appeal outside Mumbai where non-Maharashtrians were seen as performing an economic service and not necessarily as a threat. A change of track followed with Sena supporters becoming the vanguard of the Hindu movement, speeding ahead of the BJP. Later, owing to the efforts of BJP leader Pramod Mahajan, an agreeme...