Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Uddhav Thackeray on Monday said the Election Commission (EC) had “no right” to take away the ‘Shiv Sena’ party name even as he challenged the EC’s allocation of the party name and symbol to the rival Sena faction led by Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde in the Supreme Court.
“The Shiv Sena’s name was given by my grandfather [Keshav Sitaram ‘Prabhodankar’ Thackeray] and my father [Shiv Sena founder Bal Thackeray]…you [EC] have no right to take it from me. You may take away the party’s election symbol… We can accept that. But we will not tolerate any heavy-handed attitude in the case of the party name. Hence, we have moved the Supreme Court on this count,” Mr. Thackeray said, addressing his party workers in Amravati.
Speaking on the second day of his tour of the Vidarbha region, Mr. Thackeray lashed out at the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party’s politics of splitting parties, referring to NCP leader Ajit Pawar’s induction into the ruling BJP-Shinde Sena government along with several senior NCP leaders.
Targeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Mr. Thackeray said that after being hailed as the most popular Prime Minister in many surveys, the PM still felt the need to break other parties.
“Yesterday you stole my Shiv Sena, today you did the same with the NCP. Tomorrow, you will steal something else… despite being drunk on power, the BJP do not have any self-confidence in them. They still dread losing the 2024 election. They have decided not to keep any Opposition standing. Hence, they are unleashing the Enforcement Directorate and other agencies on us,” he said and challenged the BJP to leave agencies aside and face the Opposition parties in elections.
Mr. Thackeray said he “pitied” the condition of the BJP loyalists who were groaning under the weight of defectors from other parties.
“I feel pity for the loyal BJP workers. I have respect for them and the dedicated RSS workers who gave their all to build the BJP…today, they are getting crushed under the weight of defectors from other parties. Do their superiors realise how much their party’s loyalists are suffering as a result of this? The BJP’s only agenda seems to be to poach the most corrupt people from other parties,” the former CM said.
Stressing that he had never been interested in the Chief Minister’s post, Mr. Thackeray vented spleen over the BJP for daring to teach Hindutva to his Shiv Sena.
“Our Hindutva does not spew hate against any religion like theirs [BJP]… I have been accused by the BJP of sitting at home when I was CM [of the erstwhile MVA government]… I may have sat at home and done all my work, but I did not break anybody’s house. You [the BJP] are the breakers of homes. You sow divisions within families. What sort of Hindutva is this?” he said.
Mr. Thackeray questioned how the PM and the BJP, who alleged that the Sharad Pawar-led NCP was wallowing in corruption, could justify the induction of Mr. Ajit Pawar and top NCP leaders in the ruling government.
“How did they suddenly become clean? The BJP is akin to those municipality vans catching stray dogs… after catching them, the BJP seems to put all of them in a washing machine to wipe the slate of corruption clean. What sort of detergent is this?” he asked.
The former CM reminded the BJP that it was the Shiv Sena who helped build their party on its shoulders when the latter “was nothing”.
“You [the BJP] were nothing. We [the Shiv Sena] literally took you on our shoulders. And today, you dare to finish us off despite the fact that we stayed with you for 25 years,” he said.
