We will fight 2019 Assembly & General elections alone: Sanjay Raut, Shiv Sena

New Delhi: The Shiv Sena on Tuesday decided to split from the ruling NDA government at the Centre.

Senior Shiv Sena leader and Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Raut today said the alliance between his party and BJP in Maharashtra will continue till the 2019 general elections but not beyond that. The two parties will contest the polls separately. 

“We will fight 2019 Assembly and Lok Sabha elections alone,” Raut said.

The major decision was taken during the Shiv Sena's National Executive this morning in which party President Uddhav Thackeray’s son Aaditya was named as a member.

The decision to go alone in 2019 was taken after Sanjay Raut had moved a resolution in this regard. Senior leaders of the party including Manohar Joshi was present in the meeting.

Shiv Sena has been time and again threatening to pull out of the BJP government.

Shiv Sena is the oldest alliance partner of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) since mid-90s. In the October 2014 assembly elections, their alliance had broken down and both parties fought the elections independently. The BJP, then, emerged as the single largest party while the Shiv Sena sat as the main opposition party for a month, and then joined the ruling BJP in December that year. The two parties had also contested the BMC elections separately last year. Shiv Sena had emerged victorious in the local body polls. Since 2014, the Sena had  been very critical of the Modi government and lashed out heavily at all its policies and decisions. Raut recently said it was the Congress that had emerged as the "real winner" in the Gujarat election and lauded Rahul Gandhi for fighting the battle without bothering about the result.