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Maharashtra crisis: Posters of rebel Sena MLAs destroyed; police on high alert
A video showed some Shiv Sainiks in Mumbai's Kurla region damaging a hoarding with the picture of Mangesh Kudalkar, who has switched sides to rebel Shiv Sena leader and Maharashtra minister Eknath Shinde's unit.
All police stations in Maharashtra, especially those in the capital city of Mumbai, have been directed to be on high alert amid the tense political situation in the state, police said on Friday.
The order comes after police received information about Shiv Sainiks taking to streets and resorting to vandalism wherein they destroyed the hoardings of Shiv Sena MLAs who have joined rebel party leader and Maharashtra minister Eknath Shinde's camp.
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A video showed some Shiv Sainiks in Mumbai's Kurla region damaging a hoarding with the picture of Mangesh Kudalkar, who has switched sides to Shinde's unit. Similar scenes were reported from another region of Mumbai in which a poster of Sena MLA Dilip Lande was smeared with ink and another was torn.
Lande, who represents the Chandivali Assembly constituency in Mumbai, is the newest addition to Shinde's rebel camp. He traveled to Guwahati earlier today where all rebel MLAs along with Shinde are camping at the five-star Radisson Blu Hotel.
Meanwhile, Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leaders led by party president Sharad Pawar have reached Sena supremo and Maharashtra chief minister Uddhav Thackeray's family residence ‘Matoshree’. NCP leader and deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar is also one of the attendees. The meeting is being held after Uddhav in an address earlier in the day said that he still has the “will to fight" the rebellion posed by Shinde's camp though he has vacated the official chief minister's residence ‘Varsha’.
