By IANS,
Mumbai : Barely a fortnight after its rout in the Lok Sabha elections, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-Shiv Sena alliance put up a brave face Sunday and announced plans to contest jointly the Maharashtra assembly elections, due by October.
“We shall fight the Maharashtra assembly elections jointly and bury this (state) government,” opposition leader Ramdas Kadam of the Sena said.
The BJP’s state unit chief Nitin Gadkari also expressed the hope that the alliance would win the assembly elections and return to power after sitting in the opposition for 10 years.
Kadam and Gadkari were interacting with mediapersons on the eve of the crucial monsoon session of the state legislature beginning here Monday.
In the first week of the session, Finance Minister Dilip Walse-Patil is expected to present the state budget for 2009-10. In view of the general elections during April-May, the government had presented only an interim budget for the current fiscal.
The opposition will try to corner the Democratic Front government on various issues, chief being the Nov 26-29, 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks.
The other important issues that could come up in the session include the continuing farmer suicides, the controversy over the fate of warrior-king Chhatrapati Shivaji’s statue proposed to be erected in the Arabian Sea, and the spate of Maoist attacks on security personnel since January this year.
As this is considered to be the last session before the assembly elections, the government will have a lot of questions to answer.