While the BJP is making conciliatory gestures towards the Shiv Sena, the later has accused its estranged ally and industrialists of dragging their feet on saving the iconic aircraft carrier INS Vikrant, whose breaking up and scrapping has begun.
Sena chief late Bal Thackeray had made attempts to salvage the ship, which was the Indian Navy's first aircraft carrier and had played a stellar role in the 1971 war with Pakistan, and convert it into a museum.
"During the Congress regime, the BJP leaders knocked at the doors of everybody, including the president and prime minister but the Vikrant could not be saved during Congress rule. Now, the Congress government has been replaced, but no one took the trouble of saving Vikrant. What is the use of these riches and international prestige?" said an editorial on Monday in the Shiv Sena organ 'Saamna'.
"It would have been good if Vikrant was saved and it was not difficult if the government had taken it to mind," it added. The Vikrant was decommissioned in 1997 and preserved as a museum ship in Mumbai. It was scrapped as the ship, which was purchased from UK in 1957, had become difficult to maintain and the Maharashtra government had expressed its inability to help preserve it.
The editorial lamented that the plight of the warship did not move any politician and pointed to the public sentiment which was in favour of it being preserved for future generations. "We are needled by the fact that the Vikrant which defeated Pakistan was trounced by its own people and the shades of this defeat were not seen on the faces of politicians," the Sena said, criticising industrialists and "sethjis" who earned crores of rupees in profits not taking the initiative to save the vessel.
"…should large industrialists always see business in everything? Will it do if a soldier who dies or is injured while fighting on the border thinks about the benefits due to him? In some cases, work must be done while keeping aside language of benefits and profits," the editorial said, alleging that many industrialists had "cheated" banks and the government of thousands of crores of rupees.
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