nShiv Sena MP Sanjay Raut on Wednesday attacked the BJP-led NDA Government and also wrote to Rajya Sabha Chairman M Venkaiah Naidu saying moving him to the fifth row is an attempt to humiliate him and the party.
In a letter addressed to Naidu, Rajya Sabha member Sanjay Raut said, “I think that this decision was taken by someone deliberately to hurt the sentiments of Shiv Sena Party and to suppress our voice.”
“I may remind you that even when NDA was in Opposition, I was allotted a 3rd row seat in the House in view of my seniority in Rajya Sabha, but now, what I feel, it is clearly shows that my seat has been allotted in the fifth row intentionally to humiliate me and my party’s status in the House,” Raut said.
Sanjay Raut has said he fails to understand the reason behind “this unwarranted step of re-allocation of seats since there is no formal announcement about the removal from NDA”.
The senior party leader and MP has further said that the move has hurt the dignity of the Parliament and has demanded that he be allotted a seat in any of the first three rows according to the decorum of the House.
Raut has also raised questions on Venkaiah Naidu’s conduct of Rajya Sabha and said, “Chairperson is above party affiliations and should take decisions in a non-partisan manner”.
In his letter to the Rajya Sabha chairman, Raut has also said that there is no reason behind this seat change as Shiv Sena is still officially a part of NDA.
He has said there has been no “formal announcement about the removal from NDA”.
Allies Shiv Sena and BJP fought the Maharashtra assembly elections together and got a clear mandate to form the government. However, soon after the results were announced, the two parties struggled over power sharing and later they severed ties.
Both the parties has since then made several vicious attacks to blame each other for the stalemate over Government formation in Maharashtra. Shiv Sena has even removed its lone minister in the NDA Government at the Centre in order to facilitate talks with arch rivals NCP and Congress.
