CM Shinde holds ‘reply rally’ in Khed, lambasts political rivals

The undivided Shiv Sena had won four seats of the five seats in Ratnagiri in the 2019 Assembly polls. Of them, except for Bhaskar Jadhav (Guhagar), three other MLAs switched their loyalties to the Shinde-led faction. The rally, organised by former minister Ramdas Kadam, pulled a massive crowd from the district.

Mumbai: Two weeks after Uddhav Thackeray held a massive rally at Khed in coastal Ratnagiri, chief minister Eknath Shinde held an ‘uttar sabha’ (reply rally) at the same venue on Sunday. Shinde’s rally was a blend of voter-wooing promises and an attack fest where he lanced charges at Thackeray, Rahul Gandhi, the Congress and the NCP.

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The undivided Shiv Sena had won four seats of the five seats in Ratnagiri in the 2019 Assembly polls. Of them, except for Bhaskar Jadhav (Guhagar), three other MLAs switched their loyalties to the Shinde-led faction. The rally, organised by former minister Ramdas Kadam, pulled a massive crowd from the district.

Shinde, in his nearly one-hour speech, announced a slew of irrigation and road projects for Konkan and schemes for the minority and various communities. In attacking mode most of the time, he declared that he and his rebels did what they had to save the Shiv Sena’s name and symbol and Bal Thackeray’s ideology. “

Balasaheb used to say that he would wind up the party rather than join hands with the Congress,” he said. “Uddhavji joined hands with the same Congress and opted to keep mum when Veer Savarkar was insulted and Hindutva was compromised. He would even shy away from calling Balasaheb ‘Hindu Hruday Samrat’ to please his allies from the Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi.”

Shinde said that Thackeray used to muzzle the voices of upcoming leaders like Gulabrao Patil and Ramdas Kadam. “He was scared of their popularity and lacked self-confidence about his own leadership and ability,” he said. “When some rebels went to him (after the first batch of rebels reached Surat during the split last year), he arrogantly asked them to quit the party if they wanted. Now the situation is such that the party is Hum Do Humare Do (a party of four family members).”

The CM toed the BJP line of attacking the Congress for its ‘loot for 70 years’ and praised Narendra Modi for his decisions to abrogate Article 370 and construct the Ram temple at Ayodhya. “Everybody knows who walked alongside Rahul Gandhi during his Bharat Jodo Yatra,” he said. “They boast that they hoisted the tricolour in Kashmir. But had Article 370 not been abrogated, would you Gandhi have been able to do it? Rahul has insulted the country by his criticism in London. He does not have the ability to become chief of his party; how is he going to be the prime minister of the country?”

Ramdas Kadam, who was the organiser of the rally, said that though the Thackeray faction ridiculed them with the ‘khokes of sweet’ (boxes of crores of rupees) jibe, he himself and even Shinde had given many such khokes of sweets to Thackeray when they were in the party.