Kamal Ghorui
NEW DELHI: Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) president Raj Thackeray posted a cryptic social media message on Friday, saying that if he ever took a “flexible stance” in politics, it would never be driven by “personal gain.”His remarks came on the 100th birth anniversary of his uncle, Bal Thackeray, the founder of the undivided Shiv Sena. Raj Thackeray left the Sena in 2005 and launched the MNS the following year.
The MNS chief posted on X in Marathi, “Today loyalties are easily sold off. Principles are casually discarded, and politics has become entirely opportunistic. In today’s politics, success is measured not by which issues were brought to the forefront or how fiercely regional and linguistic identities were kept alive, but by how much success was achieved in electoral politics and what tricks are employed to get there.““In Balasaheb’s time, there were no such compromises with expectations like these…He himself had no craving for power…Even when Balasaheb had to take a flexible stance in politics at times, his love for the Marathi people never diminished even by a fraction; on the contrary, it only grew stronger. These are the values instilled in us,” he wrote.Thackeray added that he is giving his word that if he ever took a “slightly flexible stance in this completely transformed politics,” it would “never be for my personal gain or selfish interests.”His statement comes two days after five MNS corporators extended support to Maharashtra deputy chief minister Eknath Shinde‘s Shiv Sena in the Kalyan-Dombivli Municipal Corporation (KDMC) in the Thane district.The move raised eyebrows, as the party had contested the January 15 civic polls alongside the Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena (UBT) in several municipal corporations across the state, including the KDMC and Mumbai. The MNS-Sena (UBT) alliance had reunited Raj with Uddhav, Bal Thackeray’s son and former Maharashtra chief minister, after 20 years of estrangement.Shiv Sena (UBT) is a faction of the previously undivided Shiv Sena, the other being the Shinde-led group. The party split in June 2022, resulting in the two factions, with the Shinde camp recognised by the Election Commission as the “real” Shiv Sena. The split also led to the collapse of the Uddhav Thackeray-led state government.(With PTI inputs)
