All "secular but Hindutva" parties will come together: Fadnavis

In a subtle hint of his hopes of the the BJP and the Shiv Sena jointly contesting the next year's polls, Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis has said that all "secular but Hindutva" parties would come together to counter the "pseudo-secular" opposition.

He said the BJP-Shiv Sena alliance broke before the 2014 state polls because of the Uddhav Thackeray-led party's "adamant" attitude on seat-sharing.

"The Shiv Sena may be a party led by Uddhav Thackeray, but it is run on the ethos of late Balasaheb Thackeray. Looking at the current situation, I can say that all secular, but Hindutva parties will come together to counter the pseudo-secular opposition parties," he said.

"This was Balasaheb's thinking as well," Fadnavis said.

The chief minister made the comments yesterday while being interviewed by Sanjay Raut, the Sena's Rajya Sabha member and executive editor of its mouthpiece 'Saamana', at a Lokmat Group programme here.

Lokmat Group chairman and Rajya Sabha member Vijay Darda was also present at the event.

Raut asked Fadnavis how he knew the Sena's future plans when he could not even predict the next move of the RSS.

To this, the chief minister said, "The Shiv Sena is a political party and hence it is easy to predict what it will do in future."