Nashik (Maharashtra), Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Sanjay Raut on Tuesday said that if any of the leaders who sided with Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Eknath Shinde in 2022 regret their "mistake", they should return to the party led by Uddhav Thackeray.
Some people, however, will not get entry into the party, Raut said, speaking to reporters here.
"If anyone regrets the mistake...(because of) the way the BJP is insulting them, if anyone feels that they have made a mistake or were misguided, they should come back to the party led by Uddhav Thackeray," the Rajya Sabha member said.
Raut's remark came a day after former state minister Abdul Sattar, who is with the Shiv Sena faction led by Shinde, said that while the BJP "cut the hands and legs of the Sena (UBT), it chopped off the head of the (Shinde-led) Shiv Sena in Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar district."
There was no point to the Sena-BJP alliance if "our elder brother is finishing us off," Sattar said, while replying in the affirmative when asked if the two Shiv Senas should come together.
Raut said that the BJP was never the "elder brother" in the original saffron alliance in Maharashtra. The undivided Shiv Sena was the senior partner, and as the BJP could not accept this, it split the party, he said.
The Shinde-led Shiv Sena was not a party but was born of "corrupt practices" of the Election Commission, Raut further said, adding that whenever the Supreme Court's decision on the legal dispute related to the Shiv Sena symbol and name comes, it will be in favour of the Uddhav Thackeray-led party.
Sushma Andhare, a Sena (UBT) spokesperson, also reacted to Sattar's statement.
"We knew from the very beginning that the BJP is slow poison... But Sattar bhai, you were helpless because you wanted power," she said.
