Polling peaceful in 3 seats, sporadic reports of booth jamming, EVM malfunction
Barring stray incidents, the second phase of polling to three Lok Sabha constituencies went off peacefully, today.
Wednesday, 7 June, is going to be a big day in the saffron camp of Indian’s political battleground. While former President Pranab Mukherjee – a staunch Congress loyalist in his political career – will be addressing a graduation ceremony of RSS pracharaks in Nagpur, BJP president Amit Shah will be meeting Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray 815 kilometres away in Mumbai.
Shah will be meeting a disgruntled Thackeray at the latter’s residence, Matoshree, in an attempt to douse the fire that has engulfed the bridge between BJP and Sena. The crucial meeting will be held around 6 pm.
Though allies in both the central and Maharashtra governments, Shiv Sena has over the years become increasingly critical of the BJP and Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The rift widened to such lengths that the two parties recently contested the Palghar Lok Sabha bypoll separately.
Advertisement
Shiv Sena was defeated in Palghar by the BJP, whose candidate Rajendra Gavit trounced Sena’s Shriniwas Vanga by over 29,000 votes.
A miffed Sena declared that it would contest the upcoming 2019 Lok Sabha elections on its own.
“We fought Palghar for the first time… We did not have a proper party apparatus, especially in the far-flung tribal pockets. Yet we gave a tough fight to the BJP,” said Thackeray.
“We will fight all the elections independently like we fought in Palghar,” said Thackeray alleging that “’saam, daam, dand, bhed (negotiation, money, punishment and division)’” were used to win Palghar.
Read More: Shiv Sena releases audio of Fadnavis asking BJP workers to ‘use all means to win Palghar’
Following the bypolls, Thackeray also called the Election Commission (EC) a “corrupt body” responsible for the mess in the conduct of elections in the country.
“The elections and the vote-counting in Palghar was a total farce. After the elections, how did the voting percentage shoot up by nearly 100,000 votes overnight? We want proof of this… There was a fraud,” he said.
Advertisement
