‘Don’t demand a separate Vidarbha’

Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray on Wednesday reiterated his support for a united Maharashtra.

Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray on Wednesday reiterated his support for a united Maharashtra.

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Thackeray said that no one should demand a separate Vidarbha state by splitting Maharashtra into two.

In a strongly-worded editorial in the party mouthpiece Saamna, Thackeray said that any attempt to split the state of Maharashtra would be met with a ‘big blaze in this state

which any fire brigade from the world would not be able to extinguish’.

Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray is the editor of Saamna and its editorials are held as Thackeray’s stand on various issues.

“Those ministers seeking to split Maharashtra in the year when it completes 50 years of its formation, should be thrown out from the government by Chief Minister Ashok Chavan,” the editorial said.

“The ministers have threatened to resign, but Chavan should throw them out before that. The people of Vidarbha want development not freedom. Chavan has rightly sanctioned a package of Rs 1,000 crore for Vidarbha for its development,” the editorial added.

“The state cannot be cut like a cake into two pieces. The demand has been revived after the Centre agreed to agreed to a separate Telangana state, splitting Andhra Pradesh,” it said.

“But the 105 people who died in the Samyukta Maharashtra (unified Maharashtra) movement in the 1960s will curse those who ask to split up the state like this and the Shiv Sena would always oppose it tooth and nail,” the editorial added.

“Those 105 people died as a part of the struggle to form a united Maharashtra and not due to drinking liquor made out of foodgrains,” the editorial said, also taking a dig at the state government’s recent scheme of making liquor out of foodgrains.