Adani Is 'Ladli Bhai' Of BJP, Not People's Mandate: Shiv Sena (UBT)'s Sanjay Raut

Responding to the massive lead the Mahayuti alliance has currently, Shiv Sena (UBT)’s Sanjay Raut dismissed the trends in the Maharashtra Assembly elections. He claimed that the ruling alliance, “Mahayuti won with Adani’s help. Adani is ‘Ladli Bhai’ of BJP. This is not people’s mandate.”

“We are well aware of what the people of Maharashtra truly want,” he said.

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As per the Election Commission data, the BJP-led Mahayuti alliance is expected to retain power in the state and is leading in 204 out of the 288 assembly seats.

Based on the early trends, the opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) is trailing behind with leads in 47 seats.

Taking a swipe at Eknath Shinde’s ‘Ladli Behna Scheme,’ Raut called Adani Group chairman and billionaire industrialist Gautam Adani the “Ladli Bhai” of BJP. “They have brought out this results to help a industrialist against whom we were raising our voice,” he added.

The Thackeray team leader said that the results are not the people’s mandate, as Eknath Shinde “could not have gone more than 20 seats.” He further claimed that they had ground reports where BJP was the possible lead party with roughly 65 seats. “We cannot expect this result,” he said.

Citing that Sharad Pawar had created a “storm” in Maharashtra, Raut expressed disbelief at Pawar not gaining “even ten seats.”

“In elections, there is victory and defeat but this a contrived result, we cannot believe this is the result,” he said.

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Sanjay Raut alleged that money was used to influence election results. “No doubt in my mind that money has been used massively, how can all of Eknath Shinde’s MLAs get elected, there was so much anger against Ajit Pawar’s MLAs, there was so much crowd for Sharad Pawar’s rallies?” he asked.