Former Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray being garlanded by his party men. (From left) Rama Mistari, Pramod Shukla, Dr Advay Hiray-Patil, Lucky Khairnar and other office bearers flank the ex-CM.
At a rally in Maharashtra’s Malegaon on Sunday, former Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray took a dig at Congress leader and ex-MP Rahul Gandhi for his “disparaging” remarks against Veer Savarkar. Thackeray said though it was a fact that his party was in coalition with the Congress in Maharashtra that does not mean that it will allow any insult to the great patriot.
“I openly want to convey to Rahul Gandhi that for us Sarvarkar is like a God and we will not allow any insulting remark against him,” Thackeray said. However, he praised Gandhi for his relentless raising of question as to who actually owns the Rs 20,000 crore invested by Gautam Adani in his companies?
Thackeray was speaking at a public rally organised by his party’s deputy leader Dr Advay Hiray-Patil who recently joined the Siv Sena Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray faction to take on the regional stalwart Dada Bhuse. Dr Patil who hails himself as a “not power hungry” politician says his aim was to defeat Bhuse in the upcoming assembly elections.
In his speech, Thackeray highlighted how people in Malegaon reacted to his calls in a positive manner during the Covid-19 pandemic in the early 2020 when he was the Chief Minister. “In Maharashtra, Malegaon was one of the two hotspots along with Dharavi in Mumbai. At that time I spoke with religious leaders in Malegaon and made an appeal to them to ask people to fight the Covid-19 in a disciplined manner,” he said.
“With encouraging response from people in Malegaon as well as Dharavi we were able to suppress the pandemic in just few weeks in these two hotspots,” he added. In the run up to the Lok Sabha and assembly elections in 2024, Thackeray has started to hold state-wide public rallies mainly in constituencies seen as strongholds of forty rebel MLAs who joined the Eknath Shinde faction last year.
Thackeray went on to suggest that if people took a look at the ousted Maha Vikas Aghadi government’s report card they will come to know that the MVA led from the front when it came to resolving farmers’ issues and giving them compensation for crop losses due to untimely rains and hailstorms.
