Mumbai: Sounding the bugle for Mumbai civic body polls, Union Home Minister and senior BJP leader Amit Shah on Monday asked party leaders and workers to inflict a “deeper wound” on Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena on its home turf. Shah slammed Thackeray saying he compromised on everything to become the chief minister with the support of Sharad Pawar-led Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and Congress despite seeking votes in the 2019 polls in the name of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP’s Devendra Fadnavis.
The Shiv Sena has been ruling the Mumbai civic body for almost 30 years. Currently, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) is run by an administrator as the five-year term of the civic body had ended and elections are awaited. If you hit a person at any place, it does hurt. When you hit a person on his home ground, the pain is deeper. Now it is the time to inflict a deeper wound to Sena, Shah told a meeting of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders and select functionaries here after visiting ‘Lalbaug cha Raja’ and other popular pandals of Lord Ganesh in the city.
Shah said he was setting the target to win 150 of the 227 seats in the BMC for the Shiv Sena (Shinde faction) and BJP alliance.
“It is inevitable now that the BJP will win the civic polls under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, he said.
Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena is shrunk because of his deeds as he had insulted the people’s mandate and drifted from the ideology. I want to reiterate that we never made any promise of sharing the chief minister’s post with Uddhav Thackeray, he said.
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Thackeray has often claimed that Shah had promised sharing of the chief minister’s post with Shiv Sena during his visit to the former’s residence in Mumbai before the 2019 elections. However, Shah and Devendra Fadnavis have been denying these claims.
The BJP has launched an aggressive campaign to wrest the BMC, the richest civic body with an annual budget of Rs 45,000 crore, from the Uddhav Thackeray-led party. Shah also stressed ousting the Shiv Sena with the help of Chief Minister Eknath Shinde-led camp which rebelled against Thackeray in June this year. I am asking all of you. Unless BJP gains the control of Mumbai, you cannot win Maharashtra. The real Shiv Sena has come with us and now is the time to show Uddhav (Thackeray) his place, he said.