New Delhi:
Slamming the BJP in a hard-hitting speech, Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray said on Thursday his party will go it alone in the February civic polls in Mumbai and at other places in Maharashtra.
Thackeray's announcement ended the suspense over whether the Sena and the BJP, the ruling alliance partners, would fight the election to Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM), the country's richest civic body, together.
Seat-sharing talks between the two parties had hit a deadlock amid bickering.
"I will not bend in front of anybody. If somebody thinks we are lesser than them, we will displace them," an aggressive Thackeray told a gathering of party workers without naming the BJP.
The Sena was all set to contest the polls without an alliance and he needed foot soldiers who had the "courage to launch a frontal attack, instead of indulging in back-stabbing", Thackeray said.
"Once I have taken the decision, I do not want anybody to question it. If you promise to stand by me, I have taken the decision to go it alone in Maharashtra. I will not go to anybody with a begging bowl for alliance and will not be at anybody's mercy. I have decided there will be no alliance for any of the coming municipal corporation or zilla parishad polls," the Sena chief said.
Referring to the recent protests in Tamil Nadu, he said the coming polls were no less than 'jallikattu' where "a bull needs to be tamed" once and for all. "When you talk of transparency, we expect a similar transparency in the state government and at the Centre," Thackeray said in an apparent reference to the BJP's demand of "transparency" in the functioning of the Sena-controlled MCGM.
(With inputs from PTI)
