MNS to go it alone in Nanded

The Shiv Sena’s overtures to the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) for their first ever pre-election alliance in the Nanded civic body may have come to a naught. For, MNS chief Raj Thackeray has rejected the offer.

The Sena had offered a pre-poll alliance to the MNS in the Nanded-Waghala Municipal Corporation (NWMC) to take on former chief minister Ashok Chavan, who controls it. The polls to the 81 seats in the civic body are due on October 14.

“We will not do it,” Raj told DNA, adding that the party will, instead, choose to contest the polls on its own strength. In the past, the Shiv Sena and the MNS have come to a post-election understanding in places like Ambernath, Thane and Kalyan-Dombivli. But the two warring parties have not forged any pre-poll alliance so far.

An MNS leader admitted that the decision to reject the Sena’s overtures may have been to allow the party to test its strength in the polls and to avoid any confusion in the party’s rank and file through an open alliance with the Shiv Sena, with whom it is competing for the same voter base.

“Our activists have built the party in the last five years and must get a chance to contest the polls,” said the MNS leader, adding that this would help the party to test the waters on its own strength. The
MNS leader said it was “too early” to join hands with the Shiv Sena in a pre-poll arrangement.

“The MNS will always try for a separate, independent political space.... Any compromise that will happen will be in disguise, like in Thane. There will never be an open alliance,” said Surendra Jondhale, professor and head of the department of civics and politics at the University of Mumbai. He added that a pre-poll alliance with the Sena will leave Raj with little or no “elbow room for political expansion or political development.”

Moreover, the Sena’s ally — the Republican Party of India, led by former Lok Sabha MP and Dalit leader Ramdas Athavale — has objected to the MNS being part of the alliance in future and also to the proposed arrangement at Nanded.