Mumbai (The Hindu): Taking a dig at Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, who linked the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) impressive performance in the first round of civic polls in Maharashtra to demonetisation, the Shiv Sena on Wednesday said those who link the victory to demonetisation are fools.

“Those who say that people have voted the BJP to power due to the decision of demonetisation are fools. If that was the case, at least 100 candidates from that party would have been elected as council chief, which did not happen,” said an editorial in Sena mouthpiece Saamna.

The Sena, which shares power with the BJP in the State and at the Centre, took a swipe at the BJP for having its campaign spearheaded by Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, saying, in contrast, Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray or any of the party leaders did not engage in the poll campaign.

“We wanted to instill confidence into our workers that they can fight the money-based campaign, which we succeeded. Our win assumes significance as we, in a bid to get the required numbers, did not engage in any unholy alliance,” it said, adding this makes the party’s win pure. “We did not adopt the approach of dampening the morale of our party workers by allying with parties against whom we levelled charges of corruptions.”

Had the Sena entered into backdoor alliances with parties like the Congress, NCP, and the AIMIM, it too could have got more, the editorial said.

The BJP emerged as the largest party in the first leg of the poll with 893 councillors, followed by the Congress, NCP, and the Sena, who won 727, 615 and 529 seats.