Sinha accuses BJP of toppling Maharashtra government by kidnapping Sena MLAs

Yashwant Sinha, Presidential Candidate of the Combined Opposition parties, on Sunday accused the ruling BJP of topping the MVA coalition regime in Maharashtra by facilitating the kidnapping of Shiv Sena MLAs.

The MLAs were taken to Gujarat and Assam, both BJP-ruled states. “The Centre has no respect for the federal structure of the Constitution. It is constantly encroaching upon the powers of States,” Sinha told media persons in Bengaluru, as the new regime was preparing to seek a vote of confidence in Mumbai on Monday.

The former Union Finance & External Affairs Minister was in Bengaluru on Sunday, the fifth day of his election campaign, to meet the Congress MPs and MLAs. Senior Congress leaders Mallikarjuna Kharge, Siddaramaiah and DK Shivakumar, among others, welcomed him to the Congress Legislature Party (CLP) meeting.


The BJP supporters, Sinha alleged, were trolling the Supreme Court for its comments on former BJP spokesperson Nupur Sharma.

“In the past eight years, the ruling dispensation at the Centre has launched repeated assaults on democracy and secularism, which form the founding principles of our Republic. It has unleashed a poisonous communal propaganda to divide India’s multi-religious society.”

Sinha said he fully endorsed the views of the Chief Justice of India Justice NV Ramana that the judiciary was answerable to the Constitution and Constitution alone. “Indeed, I have been saying, since I filed my nomination papers on June 27, that the sole purpose behind my acceptance of the combined Opposition’s offer to be their candidate is to safeguard the Constitution and its lofty values, which are today under unprecedented threat.”

The central government, the former Union Minister said, has weaponized ED, CBI, Election Commission and even the Governor’s office against Opposition parties, their leaders and their governments.

In Karnataka, he said, the government had been attempting to communalise the minds of the young generation by introducing a new school curriculum coloured by the ruling party’s ideological agenda. I condemn this.