Union minister Narayan Rane on Friday claimed the Shiv Sena was trying to project the victory of independent candidate Kalaben Delkar in the Dadra and Nagar Haveli (ST) seat Lok Sabha bypoll as its victory even though she did not use the party's election symbol.
Talking to reporters here, Rane, who spent four decades in Shiv Sena before joining Congress and then BJP, said he checked Delkar's poll symbol after the Uddhav Thackeray-led party claimed it had won the first Lok Sabha seat outside Maharashtra.
"I checked her election symbol. Turns out she contested using the 'batsman' symbol and not Shiv Sena's bow and arrow symbol," the BJP leader said.
"Shiv Sena is in the habit of appropriating credit for someone else's victory. They have now started making ludicrous claims that they will capture Delhi," said Rane, who was Maharashtra chief minister for a few months while in that party.
Rane said Shiv Sena won 56 seats in 2019 Maharashtra Assembly elections only due to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's charisma. Now that party won't be able to win more than eight seats," he added.
Delkar won the recent bypoll with a margin of 51,269 votes by defeating her nearest BJP rival Mahesh Gavit.
Riding on a sympathy wave post the death of her husband, who allegedly hanged himself in a hotel in Mumbai in February, Kalaben Delkar (50) bagged 1,18,035 votes. Gavit polled 66,766 votes.
Counting of votes was held in Silvassa city of the Dadra and Nagar Haveli district, which is a part of the Union Territory of Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu.
