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Aaditya begins Maha tour, Uddhav may follow
Mumbai: Shiv Sena leader Aaditya Thackeray on Thursday started a three-day tour of the state, with his father and former chief minister Uddhav Thackeray expected to follow suit shortly, party functionaries familiar with the matter said
Mumbai: Shiv Sena leader Aaditya Thackeray on Thursday started a three-day tour of the state, with his father and former chief minister Uddhav Thackeray expected to follow suit shortly, party functionaries familiar with the matter said.
After the bitter disappointment of losing power in the government and also most of their party leaders to Eknath Shinde’s rebellion, the tour by the Thackerays is being seen as an attempt to counter charges of being distant and inaccessible to the cadre, as well as to tap into the latent sympathy in party sympathisers over the way the Uddhav-led MVA government was brought down.
On Thursday, Aaditya began his ‘Shiv Samvad Yatra’ from Thane district — the epicentre of the rebellion engineered by Shinde on June 20 that eventually led to the MVA government being toppled.
In a show of strength at Bhiwandi, from where the yatra started, Aaditya attacked the Shinde- Devendra Fadnavis regime and claimed that it would fall soon. Incidentally, none of the Sena’s 12 corporators from Bhiwandi were present at the address.
On his way to Bhiwandi from Thane, Aaditya also stopped outside chief minister Eknath Shinde’s home and greeted his supporters for a short time.
“Whoever we trusted and gave ministerial posts, stabbed us in the back. These are not rebels or revolutionaries, as they call themselves. These are merely back-stabbers. Those who left, were never Shiv Sainiks. The hundreds of people who have gathered here are the real Sainiks,” Aaditya said.
Apart from Shinde, 39 Shiv Sena MLAs have rebelled against Uddhav, leaving him with just 15 legislators. “Our priority now is to reach out to party workers and ensure that while the legislators may have deserted us, these activists stay on with the Shiv Sena,” said a senior Shiv Sena leader.
He added that Uddhav will also launch his own tour of the state soon. “This outreach will pick up after the rains subside,” the leader added.
Later in the day, Aaditya also held programmes at Shahapur, Kasara, Igatpuri and Nashik.
On Friday, Aaditya is expected to address Shiv Sena and Yuva Sena functionaries and workers in Manmad, Vaijapur, Yeola and Aurangabad (Sambhajinagar), and on Saturday, he will hold meetings at Paithan and Nevasa and later move to the temple-town of Shirdi, where the first phase of the campaign will come to an end.
