3 failed students came together in Maha: Ram Madhav

Speaking to DH, Madhav, a general secretary in the party, also refused to accept that there was any fault of BJP that overestimated the strength of Ajit Pawar and went with him to form a government, which fell within three days after the swearing of Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis.

“Any question with respect to Maharashtra should start with the mandate. The mandate was clearly for a BJP-led alliance in which Shiv Sena was also a partner. If you look at the success rate of BJP, it was 70 %. Shiv Sena’s success rate was less. The vote was for BJP-led government to continue in power. Unfortunately, Shiv Sena from the day one had tried to distort this mandate, defeat this mandate in its eagerness to have Chief Minister’s post there,” Madhav said.

The BJP leader found nothing wrong in the party cozying with rival Opposition party NCP, which had fought the assembly elections in alliance with Maharastra and made big gains due to electrifying campaign of Sharad Pawar.

“We tried to respect that mandate. In the process yes, we tried to ally with NCP, which from the other side has similar popular mandate. From Opposition, it was NCP which had maximum number of seats. These two parties tried to come together but then NCP subsequently backed out, Ajit Pawar backed out. So there was no reason for us to continue,” he said.

Madhav also justified the decision of Fadnavis to put in papers the same day arguing “because the only other way would have been to split other parties, split in horse-trading. So we decided to allow the other formation to form the government.”

“Let us hope they succeed in delivering justice to people,” Madhav said.

He also ruled out any impact of the falling apart of BJP-Sena alliance of Maharashta in poll-bound Jharkhand, where also BJP lost its previous ally AJSU headed by Sudesh Mahto.

“In Jharkhand, we have run our government for five years, a good government focussed on development. So based on the performance in last five years, we are quite hopeful that the government will be returned by people to power,” he said.

Chief Minister Raghubar Das-led BJP government of BJP is the only government in the state since the state’s formation in 2000, which could complete a full term.