Mumbai: Uddhav Thackeray, Amit Shah’s close aide share dais

On Saturday, Thackeray and Patil shared the dais at Sena MLA Anil Kadam’s programme in Nashik’s Pimpalgaon. Both of them travelled in the same car, fuelling the debate further.

Ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, the BJP has been leaving no stone unturned to stitch a pre-election pact with the Sena. With the Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) almost firming up their alliance ahead of the poll, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and other senior BJP leaders have been making frequent overtures to the party’s bitter ally. On the eve of the fourth anniversary of his government last week, Fadnavis publicly reached out to the Sena leadership for a pre-poll pact.

While Thackeray had announced last year that his party will not contest any more elections in alliance with the BJP and has been firing frequent barbs at Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP, there have been some indications of a thaw ever since Modi personally telephoned Thackeray in August to thank him for backing the BJP candidate for the Rajya Sabha deputy chairman’s post.

On Saturday, Thackeray dropped another hint.  “People keep asking me how can I criticise the BJP when my party is sharing power with them. To which my answer is that we aren’t criticising the government. We are only raking up citizens’ issue,” said Uddhav while addressing the gathering at Pimpalgaon.

“We are willing to support any government in power, as long as it works in public interest,” he said. “Let us come together for laying the foundation stone of the Ram temple in Ayodhya.”

He, however, chose not to make any public statement over the fate of the alliance. While there have been some informal discussions between the two parties regarding an alliance for the Lok Sabha polls, indications are that any formal discussion in this regard will take place only after Diwali.