Shiv Sena President Uddhav Thackeray has challenged the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to defeat it in the ensuing Mumbai civic polls. Thackeray also said that his party’s bond with the city was unbreakable, and also hit out at Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde over his rebellion and for laying claims to his late father’s legacy.
Thackeray also accused the BJP of “lying” on the Rs 1.54 lakh crore Vedanta-Foxconn semiconductor project which has been shifted to Gujarat.
A blame game erupted in Maharashtra following the announcement last week that the joint venture semiconductor project of Indian conglomerate Vedanta and Taiwanese electronics giant Foxconn, proposed to be set up near Pune city earlier, will come up in Gujarat now. Addressing party workers at suburban Goregaon, Thackeray said the Centre is giving huge incentives to the project after it was moved to the adjoining BJP-ruled state.
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He said, “Union Home Minister Amit Shah has asked his party to show the Shiv Sena its place in the Mumbai civic polls. I dare you to try it. Shiv Sena’s relationship with the city was unbreakable and the party was deeply connected with the day-to-day life of ordinary Mumbaikars, rushing to their help whenever required.”
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Thackeray asked the BJP, his former ally, to tell people what was its contribution to building the metropolis apart from considering it just a piece of real estate.
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In a dig at CM Shinde, Thackeray said, “When I came on the stage here, I first checked whether my father’s (Sena founder Bal Thackeray) picture was there. We have heard of child kidnapping gangs, but for the first time there is a father kidnapping gang.”
Shinde, who raised a banner of revolt against Uddhav Thackeray’s leadership in June and walked away with 39 party MLAs, has repeatedly claimed his faction was the “real” Shiv Sena and that he was taking forward the Hindutva ideology of Bal Thackeray.
Elections to the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), the country’s richest civic body, are due by the year-end. The Shiv Sena has ruled the BMC for more than two decades and the civic body is currently under a state government-appointed administrator.
