The heated exchange between Narayan Rane and Arvind Sawant took place in Lok Sabha
The ripples of political developments in Maharashtra reached Parliament yesterday with members of the ruling BJP and the Opposition taking potshots at each other.
One such heated exchange took place between Union Minister Narayan Rane and Arvind Sawant, an MP from Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray).
Mr Sawant, MP from Mumbai South, hit out at the BJP and claimed that the Opposition had to move the no-confidence motion because of the centre's silence on the Manipur situation.
Referring to recent political shocker, in which several MLAs of Sharad Pawar's NCP followed his nephew Ajit Pawar into joining the Eknath Shinde government, Mr Sawant said BJP had gone from calling NCP a "Naturally Corrupt Party" to embracing its leaders.
In response, Mr Rane said, "He (Sawant) has talked about Hindutva. He has said something about what kind of Hindutva is followed by the
Shiv Sena and the Uddhav faction. If they love Hindutva so much, they are proud of it. Why did they leave the Bharatiya Janata Party and join hands with Pawar Saheb to get power in the year 2019? Didn't they remember Hindutva at that time?"
A former Shiv Sena heavyweight, Mr Rane said the party weakened considerably under the leadership of Uddhav Thackeray.
As a heated exchange between Mr Sawant and Mr Rane broke out, the latter said the Team Thackeray member does not have the "aukaat" - meaning stature - to speak against Prime Minister Narendra Modi or Home Minister Amit Shah.
A viral video showed him gesturing to Mr Sawant, asking him to sit and repeatedly saying, "tumhari aukat nahin hai". Eventually, Chair intervened and asked Mr Rane not to make personal remarks.
"The Shiv Sena no longer has the roar of the tiger. It has now been reduced to a cat," said Mr Rane.
Responding to Mr Rane's remarks, Priyanka Chaturvedi, another Shiv Sena (UBT) MP, tweeted, "This man is a minister. Here he is seen displaying the standard of this government and how low it can go."
Earlier, Mr Pawar's daughter and Baramati MP Supriya Sule said the BJP had toppled nine governments in its nine years and destroyed institutions.
Hitting back, Eknath Shinde's son Shrikant Shinde called Opposition bloc INDIA a "destructive alliance".