The Shiv Sena has blamed the Bharatiya Janata Party for the National Democratic Alliance's defeat in the Lok Sabha election.
"In the final analysis, with their overconfidence and arrogance, the BJP turned out to be a party that had eyes but could see not, had ears but could hear not," says Sena Rajya Sabha member Eknath Thakur.
Thakur, who brought out a compilation of his speeches made in the Rajya Sabha during 2003-04, in a booklet titled If only the BJP were to listen to the Shiv Sena, says in the forward that Sena's timely advice to the BJP "eventually turned out to be only a cry in the wilderness".
His indictment comes after party chief Bal Thackeray's criticism of the NDA's divestment and labour policies soon after the poll verdict.
Thakur says things would have been different had the BJP listened to the Sena and carried out a midcourse correction.
Though the MP showers praise on Vajpayee, saying he will find a place in the history as the greatest PM India ever had, he claims that the NDA was defeated because "a coterie of geniuses around Vajpayeeji ensured that he did not receive proper feedback on what was really happening in the country".
Similarly, the Sena leader reasons that some "MPs in the NDA, despite realising how certain policies and actions of the government were being seen as anti-people, could not become a force powerful enough to bring about a midcourse correction in the functioning of the ruling coalition".
Thakur feels that most of the Sena MPs fell in this category but claims that his party was "taken for granted on many occasions by the BJP".
The MP recounts that in February 2004, when the 'India Shining' campaign was in full bloom, he had warned the BJP it would recoil on them.
