Union home minister Amit Shah on Wednesday sought to brazen out the BJP’s spectacular humiliation in Maharashtra, insisting the night operation to install a government was not “unconstitutional”.

Instead, speaking at an event hosted by Republic TV, Shah asked: “Isn’t it horse-trading to take support by offering the chief minister’s post? Let Sonia Gandhi and Sharad Pawar claim the chief minister’s post and take the Shiv Sena’s support. Will the Sena give support?”

The Sena had emerged as the second largest party.

Shah later tweeted excerpts from the interview.

“We didn’t engage in any horse-trading. They (NCP-Cong) ran away with the entire stable and nobody is asking any questions,” Shah said, not explaining how the NCP keeping its own MLAs together was “horse-trading”.

Justifying the decision to go with Ajit, the BJP president said: “We didn’t go to him. He came to us and offered support…. What is unconstitutional in this?”

Shah was not asked why the Centre revoked President’s rule in the cover of darkness, while most of the country was sleeping, and why it invoked an emergency provision to bypass the cabinet for this.

Shah denied any setback. “Every ideology and every value is being twisted to form the government but it’s being projected as a failure of the BJP,” he said.