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Uddhav Thackeray meets PM Modi; next stop is Sonia Gandhi, Advani
The chief minister’s son Aditya Thackeray, who is a minister in his cabinet, also accompanied him. The Shiv Sena chief will also meet Congress president Sonia Gandhi, veteran BJP leader L K Advani and Union Home Minister Amit Shah.
Maharashtra chief minister Uddhav Thackeray and son Aaditya called on Prime Minister Narendra Modi at his office in national capital Delhi on Friday. This was Uddhav Thackeray’s second meeting with PM Modi after assuming charge as chief minister, their first in a formal setting.
In a tweet shortly after their meeting, PM Modi’s office and Uddhav Thackeray tweeted photographs. “CM Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray had a courtesy meeting with the Hon’ble Prime Minister of India Shri @narendramodi ji in Delhi today,” the chief minister’s official handle tweeted.
At a media briefing later, Uddhav Thackeray said he had a fruitful discussion with the prime minister concerning issues about Maharashtra and confirmed that they did discuss the amended citizenship law and the population register.
He will next meet Congress boss Sonia Gandhi and BJP patriarch Lal Krishna Advani.
Uddhav Thackeray’s Shiv Sena and PM Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party had been allies for decades but split up after last year’s Maharashtra assembly elections. Uddhav Thackeray had taken offence to the BJP leadership’s assertion that the two allies hadn’t agreed to sharing the chief minister’s chair, a denial that Thackeray said, implied that he was lying.
Thackeray did become the chief minister after a brief spell of central rule but as a member of an unlikely three-party coalition with the Sena’s two prime rivals, the NCP and the Congress. He has acknowledged on more than one occasion that the Sena and its two partners - NCP and Congress - hadn’t been on the same side of the ideological divide but they would work it out.
The first challenge on the ideological contradiction within the Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi coalition came soon after Uddhav Thackeray took oath when parliament took up the Citizenship Amendment Bill. His party voted in favour of the bill in the Lok Sabha but its two alliance partners persuaded it to abstain from voting in the Rajya Sabha.
Over the last few weeks, there have been some awkward moments in the Maharashtra coalition after chief minister Uddhav Thackeray asserted that he did not see anything wrong with implementing the national population register. It is a stand that contradicts the Congress position, which counts the population register as the big step towards the National Register of Citizens.
Several states ruled by non-NDA parties have already declared that they will not implement the population register. Congress leaders have indicated that it would be embarrassing if the Maharashtra government goes ahead to implement NPR.
A Congress leader suggested that Sonia Gandhi is unlikely to go into the details of the NPR stand of the two parties or the coalition but could point to the need for some convergence on contentious issues, an aspect that was underlined in the common minimum programme of the coalition as well.
