After Shah’s visit, Saamna tones down bitterness towards BJP

Sena mouthpiece supports Sambhaji Bhide, guru to the BJP, while it slams NCP chief Pawar and BBM leader Prakash Ambedkar accusing them of misleading probe

The Shiv Sena and its mouthpiece ‘Saamna’ have changed their bitter language against Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its government after the closed-door meeting between Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray and BJP president Amit Shah last week.

Instead of taking an antigovernment and anti-BJP line, ‘Saamna’ has been defending Sambhaji Bhide, guru to many BJP leaders, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi and chief minister Devendra Fadnavis.

A day after its defence of Sambhaji Bhide in its party mouthpiece, the Sena followed it up by slamming Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief Sharad Pawar and Bharip-Bahujan Mahasangh (BBM) leader Prakash Ambedkar, accusing them of misleading the investigations in the January 1, Bhima-Koregaon caste violence incident.

In an editorial, the Sena remarked that the politics of the NCP chief was disrupting social harmony in the state and that it did not behove him, as a former CM of the state, to create obstacles in the path of the police investigation. On Tuesday, ‘Saamna’ came out in defence of Bhide, describing him as a modern-day Bajiprabhu Deshpande and praised him for his stand on Hindutva. For the second day in a row, the Sena has taken on the opposition, raising quite a few eyebrows, coming as it does, just days after Pawar had made overtures to the Sena to join the opposition led Mahagathbandhan (mega-alliance).

It may be recalled that over the weekend, the NCP chief, while commenting on the recent arrest of five people in connection with the BhimaKoregaon incident, had alleged that the government was branding some progressive people as Naxals for organising the Elgar Parishad.

The Sena wanted to know whether the NCP chief and the BBM leader had taken upon themselves to mislead the course of the police investigations. It wanted to know on what grounds had Pawar said that those caught by the police for instigating the riots in Bhima-Koregaon had not actually done so?

Pointing out that Pawar himself was the chief minister of the state four times, it wanted to know who Pawar was trying to save by saying that the police had caught the wrong people. It further alleged that when the state was up in flames after the Bhima-Koregaon incident, Pawar, instead of asking the people to maintain peace, was trying to create the delusion that Hindutva outfits were behind the incident.