‘Hugging those who tried to finish my son’: Uddhav’s fresh barb at rebels; dares Shinde-BJP to face mid-term elections

Hardening his stand against the Eknath Shinde-led rival camp, Shiv Sena president Uddhav Thackeray on Friday asked how they can claim to love the ‘Matoshree’ and the Thackeray family if they align with those who have subjected him and his family to the worst kind of criticism and even attempted to “destroy his sons’ lives”.

Speaking to reporters at his residence ‘Matoshree’, Uddhav hit out at the rebel group for keeping mum when the BJP targeted and “abused” him and his family in the last two-and-a-half years.

“You keep in touch with them and betray your own party like this,” he said without naming anyone. The former CM wondered whether the rebel MLAs’ love for him and his family was real.

“No one had the courage to speak against us but they used the most vulgar language to abuse us. But people who were abusing us, you have gone and sat in their own lap, you are meeting them, hugging them. The people who disrespected the Thackeray family, used lowly words for us, the people who tried to finish my son and you have decided to sit along with such people,” Thackeray charged.

Demanding mid-term elections in Maharashtra, Uddhav asserted that nobody can take away his party’s ‘bow and arrow’ symbol even as the rebel Sena faction has staked a claim to it.

According to law, no one can take away the bow and arrow symbol from Shiv Sena. I am saying this after talking to constitutional experts,” he said.

Rebel Shiv Sena MLA Gulabrao Patil had on Wednesday said the faction led by Shinde was the real claimant of the party’s poll symbol.

He dared the rebels led by new Chief Minister Eknath Shinde and the BJP to face mid-term elections, saying that people should be allowed to take a stand on the toppling of the previous Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government led by him. If people did not favour his party in the elections, he would accept the verdict, he said.

Thackeray said the Supreme Court’s verdict on the disqualification plea of 16 rebel MLAs, scheduled to be given on July 11, will decide not just the future of the Shiv Sena, but also of Indian democracy.

“I trust the judiciary. The Supreme Court order (on the plea for disqualification of rebel MLAs) is not restricted to Shiv Sena alone, but it will also show the direction in which the democracy is heading. The country is looking at what decision the SC gives because this will also show the future of democracy in the country and whether the four pillars of democracy are discharging their duties or now,” he said.

Thackeray also said he would take a decision which candidate to support for the presidential election after consulting the party MPs.

Earlier this week, Sena’s Lok Sabha member Rahul Shewale urged him to direct the party MPs to vote for the National Democratic Alliance’s (NDA) presidential candidate Droupadi Murmu. During his press conference, Thackeray did not take any questions from the media.