Shiv Sena leader and former Maharashtra minister Aditya Thackeray on Saturday said he has only two questions for the 40-odd party MLAs who sided with Eknath Shinde leading to the fall of the Uddhav Thackeray government. “Why did you backstab us when we gave you everything and why have you not resigned yet to face elections as it happens in any democracy,” Thackeray asked at the CNN-News18 Town Hall.
Speaking at the event, Thackeray shot down criticism that he and his father, then CM Uddhav Thackeray, remained inaccessible or that the party’s succession plan is meant to favour him.
“I have been always around. I was given ministries that otherwise no one volunteers for. But when you have ambitions and pressures that can’t be spoken of, you jump ship,” he said.
“They shifted the goalpost left, right and centre. They blamed our allies for ruining their political fortunes. They spoke about Hindutva… Tomorrow they may blame me for wearing a blue shirt every single day.”
“If someone has ambitions, pressures on them that can’t be spoken of in public, they will hop over”: Shiv Sena’s @AUThackeray on what led to crisis in Shiv Sena
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Challenging the Eknath Shinde camp and the BJP to elections, Thackeray said: “Let’s face BMC election now, no problem. Resign and face election. We will accept the public mandate… Mumbaikars know what we have done for the city. Be it during Covid-19 and being honest with the numbers to sustainable development, I think people would prefer Mumbaikars to be running Mumbai rather than being dictated to from somewhere else,” he said.
Listing the works done by the Uddhav Thackeray government, the former minister said: “This was the first time we had heavy monsoon but Gandhi Market area and Hindmata did not flood.”
On the controversy over Metro car shed in Mumbai’s Aarey Colony, Thackeray said: “We only stopped the work at Aarey. There are some faults with that line. Rs 10,000 crore escalation was done before December 2019. According to which norm? Nobody knows.”
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