Uddhav launches into Shinde-BJP at his first public rally after split

Mumbai: In his first public address after the vertical split in the party, Shiv Sena president and former Maharashtra chief minister Uddhav Thackeray launched an aggressive attack on the BJP and the Shinde faction MLAs, accusing them of treating Mumbai like a piece of lucrative real estate and no more

Mumbai: In his first public address after the vertical split in the party, Shiv Sena president and former Maharashtra chief minister Uddhav Thackeray launched an aggressive attack on the BJP and the Shinde faction MLAs, accusing them of treating Mumbai like a piece of lucrative real estate and no more.

Thackeray formally launched his party’s BMC poll campaign at this meeting of the party’s gat pramukhs who are the primary organisational cadr (Pratik Chorge/HT PHOTO)

“These vultures are moving in for the kill. They want to capture Mumbai. They are hovering over Mumbai to grab the spoils,” he said in a carefully calibrated speech that was aimed at the around 25,000 Shiv Sainiks who packed the NESCO convention centre at Goregaon.

Thackeray formally launched his party’s BMC poll campaign at this meeting of the party’s gat pramukhs who are the primary organisational cadre. The tone and tenor of the 45-minute-long speech was stridently nativist, clearly drawing out the battle lines. The October 5th Dussehra rally would be held at Shivaji park at all cost he said. His legal team has already petitioned the Bombay High Court for the same.

But throughout the address, he kept honing back to the theme of Eknath Shinde’s “treachery,” calling him an agent of the BJP and portraying the BJP as ‘outsiders’ who were only interested in profiting off Mumbai. They want to sell off Mumbai in pieces and then throw them at the feet of those who rule from Delhi, he said, mixing his metaphors somewhat. He however refrained from naming Shinde directly.

He challenged home minister Amit Shah who had exhorted BJP workers in the city to trounce the Sena in the BMC polls, to hold the civic and state assembly elections in the next month or so. “You (the BJP) remember Mumbai only when the elections are here. But where are these vultures when Mumbai is in danger? For you, Mumbai is a land that can be sold per square foot, but for us, this is our motherland which has been secured after the martyrdom of 105 people,” he charged, referring to the Samyukta Maharashtra movement and its fight to ensure that Mumbai stayed part of Maharashtra and was not given the status of a union territory or made part of Gujarat. He also borrowed a term from Bal Thackeray’s lexicon referring to the BJP as “Kamalabai” and harked back to the time when the Shiv Sainiks had rushed to the help of Mumbaikars during the 26/11 terror attacks but the BJP was missing on the ground.

Thackeray saved his sharpest barbs for his successor Eknath Shinde. “We have heard about gangs which abduct children, but there is a gang in Maharashtra that is abducting fathers,” he said referring to the rebel camp’s attempts to stake claim over the legacy of late Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thackeray.

Thackeray then offered support for his MP and Saamana editor Sanjay Raut now in jail for alleged money laundering in the Patra chawl case. “Raut fights with conviction. He will break but not bend,” said Thackeray.

Veering briefly from politics he spoke about the MVAs achievements in the health and education sector and said the MVAs handling of the pandemic had been lauded globally.

Chief minister Eknath Shinde who is in Delhi promptly responded to Thackeray’s charges late Wednesday night. “He called me a puppet in the hands of political bosses, but let me tell him (Thackeray) that I am a true fighter and loyal believer in the ideology of party founder Balasaheb Thackeray. I have been criticized as a traitor, but let me ask you, what did you do by joining hands with Congress and NCP? Was that not treachery? Despite having fought the elections in alliance with the BJP, you formed government with the parties against whom we have fought all our lives. Was that not betrayal for the sake of power?”

“They have accused me being the agent of prime minister Narendra Modi and home minister Amit Shah. I am proud of being so, as they fulfilled the dream of Balasaheb Thackeray on the abrogation of article 370 in Jammu and Kashmir and the construction of Ram Mandir. If Thackeray is calling me a contractual CM, then yes, I take pride in being so as I have taken the contract of the well- being of the people of Maharashtra,” he said.