Defeat improper Sena-Cong-NCP alliance: Gadkari at ZP poll

Union minister and senior BJP leader Nitin Gadkari on Friday said the alliance between the Shiv Sena, Congress and NCP in Maharashtra was just for the sake of power and warned the three parties that people of the state did not like such "unnatural alliances".

He was addressing a rally for the Zilla Parishad polls slated in Nagpur for January 7.

Hitting out at the Sena for breaking the several decade old alliance with the BJP over the sharing of the chief ministerial post, Gadkari said the Uddhav Thackeray-led party had betrayed the Hindutva ideology.

The BJP and Sena had come up with 161 seats joints in the 288-member Assembly in the October polls but the latter moved out and formed a government with the ideologically opposite Congress and NCP.

"There were never any similarities between the ideology of the Sena and that of the Congress and NCP. It is only to grab power that these parties have come together. Parties that couldn't stand each other are now walking shoulder to shoulder," he said.

"But it is Maharashtra's history that people here have never liked such unnatural alliances. Balasaheb Thackeray spoke about Hindutva but the Sena is now following it just for namesake," he added.

He asked the gathering to show their displeasure with the "improper alliance" by handing them a crushing defeat in the ZP polls.