Mumbai: A day after he was refused a ticket to contest the Maharashtra Assembly polls, senior Shiv Sena leader Sada Sarvankar on Friday pointed an accusing finger at party Executive President Uddhav Thackeray for allegedly ordering the attack on former speaker Manohar Joshi's residence last Sunday.
Sarvankar, a Shiv Sena legislator who joined the Congress on Thursday, told mediapersons that when he asked Thackeray about the status of his nomination, the latter said Joshi had removed his name from the list of candidates.
"At that time, Uddhav told me to immediately do whatever I could. At that time, party Rajya Sabha member Sanjay Raut was also present," said Sarvankar who filed his nomination as a Congress candidate from Mahim on Friday afternoon.
"At his instance, my men had no option but to go and attack Joshi's residence," he added.
Last Sunday, angry Shiv Sena activists attacked Joshi's Dadar home at Oceana Building in the posh Shivaji Park, raising slogans and pelting stones.
They had damaged a vehicle in the building compound belonging to a member of the Joshi family.
The violence came amid reports that Sarvankar was being replaced by Vaidya from the Dadar constituency, Joshi's traditional stronghold.
Unable to conceal his hurt feelings at being denied a nomination that was given to former Mumbai mayor Milind Vaidya, Sarvankar said he sacrificed a lot for the Shiv Sena but it did not care to accommodate him.
In Mahim, Sarvankar will be pitted against Sena candidate, prominent Marathi actor Aadesh Bandekar, who joined the party only last fortnight.
Besides Sarvankar, another senior leader Gajanan Kirtikar, a former minister and sitting MLA, was denied a ticket. He had contested the May 2009 Lok Sabha elections on a Sena ticket but lost to the Congress' Gurudas Kamat.
Dissidence has affected Shiv Sena's ally Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) also. While a senior city leader Atul Bhatkalkar has been dropped, a leader from the coastal Konkan region, Vinay Natu, rebelled after the party conceded the Guhagar seat (Ratnagiri district) to the Shiv Sena.
While leader of Opposition in the outgoing Assembly, Ramdas Kadam, will contest as a Sena candidate from Guhagar, Natu may stand as Independent.
The Opposition Shiv Sena and the BJP are contesting the polls together with the Sena fighting for 169 seats. The BJP is contesting 119 seats in the 288-member state assembly.
In the 2004 elections, the Shiv Sena had contested on 171 seats and the BJP 117. The alliance had jointly bagged 119 seats against the Congress-Nationalist Congress party's tally of 139.
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