Sena-BJP may project Uddhav as CM

MUMBAI: The Shiv Sena-BJP alliance is likely to project the Sena’s executive president Uddhav Thackeray as its candidate for chief ministership if elections to the Lok Sabha and assembly are held simultaneously in Maharashtra.
This will be the first time that a member of the Thackeray clan will be viewed as an aspirant for an official post.
Sena chief Bal Thackeray has resolutely prevented any member of his family from accepting an official post. When the saffron combine captured power in 1995, Mr Thackeray first nominated the suave Manohar Joshi for chief ministership and subsequently replaced him with the street-smart Narayan Rane. Of course, he openly held that it was he who wielded the ‘remote-control’ for the government.
This time, however, he may relent and let his son Uddhav be projected as CM-in-waiting. He has already made his preference known by appointing Uddhav as the party’s executive president, a newly created post.
If Uddhav is projected as CM, he will effectively edge out Mr Rane from the race. Sena chief Bal Thackeray on Thursday indicated that Mr Rane may not necessarily be made the next CM even though it is widely known that the latteris keen on becoming chief minister again.
Mr Rane may be asked to concentrate on organisational affairs and not contest the elections at all. The BJP is keen on Uddhav being projected as CM since it feels the need to “project a face’’ for the polls. In all the states where assembly elections were last held, the BJP had singled out a candidate for chief ministership—Vasundhara Raje in Rajasthan, and Uma Bharti in Madhya Pradesh.
“Whether one likes it or not, politics in India has increasingly become personality-oriented. That is why we are centering our campaign around Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee,’’ a senior BJP activist told TNN recently.
The BJP is not projecting its state president Gopinath Munde as the chief ministerial candidate since that post, in all probability,will go to its alliance partner, the Shiv Sena, which is fielding a larger number of candidates.
The Maharashtra assembly has 288 seats. The Sena will field 183 candidates while the BJP will provide the candidates for the remaining seats.