Their party is Hamas: Sanjay Raut on Shinde's Dussehra rally jibe

File Photo/PTI

Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Sanjay Raut has likened the rival Sena faction led by Eknath Shinde with Hamas.

A day earlier, during his Dussehra rally, the Maharashtra Chief Minister had said in future Uddhav Thackeray would form alliance with the AIMIM and embrace even "Hamas, Hizbul, will meet Lashkar-e-Taiba" for the sake of power.

Talking to reporters in Mumbai, Raut said Shinde's comments reflected his thinking and how the BJP had influenced the Shinde-led Sena.

"They themselves are Hamas. I do not want to take these names, Lashkar-e-Taiba, Hizbul, etc. They do not matter to Maharashtra and India, but these people's brains are occupied by Hamas," he said.

Hamas, a militant organisation which administrates the Gaza Strip, is in news after it launched incursions inside Israel earlier this month, triggering a massive bombardment by the latter.

Raut further said the BJP and Shinde-led Sena will not be in power in the state and country in 2024, and the Shinde group's last Dussehra rally took place on Tuesday.

Another Shiv Sena leader Priyanka Chaturvedi accused the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its alliance partners of undermining the principles of democracy and neglecting the constitutional institutions. Chaturvedi's comments came as a rebuttal to CM Shinde's recent remarks about his former boss Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray.

Also read: Maharashtra: Govt on edge over Maratha row setback

"They know that they will lose when the elections would be there. The people of Maharashtra would make them lose," Chaturvedi asserted. She went on to criticize the BJP and some of its alliance partners. However, she stressed that the real 'anti-nationals' were those who were allegedly toppling democratically elected governments and neglecting the agencies and the Constitution.

"In a true sense, the real anti-nationals are those who are toppling the elected governments and those who are neglecting the agencies and the Constitution, and reducing the rules of democracy. And they are the BJP and their one or two alliance partners," Chaturvedi added.

Early in the day, Maharashtra opposition leader and Congress leader Vijay Wadettiwar said that Shindeis "speaking all this because of the support that Uddhav Thackeray is getting". "They should declare elections and then they will know who is original and who is a duplicate, who has the support of the public, and who has Shiv Sena's ideology." (With inputs from agencies)