After break-up, Shiv Sena's seats changed in Parliament; Sanjay Raut slams BJP

Mumbai, Nov 16: The stalemate between Shiv Sena and NDA in Maharashtra has triggered a revision of seating arrangements in the Rajya Sabha.

"We have got to know that the seating arrangement of two Shiv Sena MPs has been changed in the parliament," he said. Raut is one of the three MPs of the Shiv Sena in the upper house.

"There is a question on the existence of NDA. NDA is not the domain of any one party. Several parties have joined the alliance over time. Some of them did not even have the same ideologies. However, we had remained a part of it," Raut said.

"There is a lot of difference between the old NDA and today's NDA. Who is the convener of NDA today? (LK) Advani ji who was one of its founders has either left or is inactive," Raut added.

The development has come hours after the seating arrangement of the Shiv Sena MPs in Rajya Sabha was changed with the latter pulling out of BJP-led government at the Centre over differences in government formation in Maharashtra.

The Shiv Sena, a long-standing constituent of the NDA, fell out with the BJP over sharing the chief ministerial post, a few days after the results of the Maharashtra assembly polls were announced on October 24.

The echo of the worsening relationship between the two parties reverberated at the national level too, with the Sena's lone minister in the Modi government, Arvind Sawant, resigning on November 11.

The Sena's refusal to support its pre-poll ally, the BJP, in forming a government precipitated into a political crisis, which culminated in the imposition of President's Rule on November 12.

The Sena, which won 56 seats in the October 21 elections, is the second largest bloc in the 288-member Assembly after the BJP which won the maximum 105 seats.

The bone of contention between the two saffron parties was the Sena's insistence for a rotational chief ministership and equal allocation of portfolios, which the BJP outrightly rejected.

The NCP and the Congress had won 54 and 44 seats, respectively, in the assembly polls.

The combined strength of the Sena, the NCP and the Congress in the 288-member House comes at 154. The halfway mark is 145.