Your Experiment ‘Failed & Backfired’: Raut Responds to Fadnavis’ Claims On 2019 Events

GG News Bureau

Mumbai, 30th June. Shiv Sena (UBT) MP Sanjay Raut stated on Thursday that Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis’ 2019 “experiment” to establish a BJP-led government with Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader Ajit Pawar “failed and backfired.”

Raut told reporters here that people did not take Fadnavis seriously after his early morning oath as Chief Minister on November 23, 2019, with Ajit Pawar as his deputy, a coalition government that lasted barely over three days.

In an interview with a news channel, Fadnavis stated that NCP president Sharad Pawar agreed to form a government with the BJP in 2019, but then backed out and played a “double game.”

“If Sharad Pawar has done anything then it’s okay. There is nothing new in it. You experimented and it failed and backfired. That’s the bottom line. Forget about the double game. He (Sharad Pawar) subsequently formed a government (with united Shiv Sena and Congress) and Uddhav Thackeray became the CM and Pawar saheb backed it completely. This is a fact,” Raut said.

The Rajya Sabha MP predicted that the current government, led by Chief Minister Eknath Shinde and Fadnavis as deputy CM, will not last long.

On June 30, the Shinde-Fadnavis government will complete one year in office.

“His government will go for sure after the SC judgement (on 2022 political crisis in Maharashtra and disqualification pleas),” Raut said.

Following the 2019 Maharashtra Assembly elections, the Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena (then undivided) severed ties with its long-term ally BJP over the question of sharing the chief ministerial seat.

Later, in a hushed early morning ceremony at the Raj Bhavan, Fadnavis was sworn in as chief minister and NCP leader Ajit Pawar as his deputy, but the government lasted barely 80 hours.

Thackeray afterwards formed an alliance with the NCP and the Congress to form the Maha Vikas Aghadi government (MVA), which fell on June 29, 2022, due to a Shiv Sena revolt.