Mumbai, Nov 28
Shiv Sena (UBT) president Uddhav Thackeray Tuesday launched a scathing attack on Chief Minister Eknath Shinde over his visit to Telangana to campaign for the BJP at a time when Maharashtra’s farmers are reeling from crop loss due to the unseasonal rain and hailstorm.
Thackeray called Shinde, who heads the rival Sena faction and rules Maharashtra in alliance with the BJP and a faction of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), useless to run the government if he is going to another state for campaigning when his home state and its farmers are facing natural calamities. “The farmers of my state are in trouble due to the natural calamity of unseasonal rain and hailstorms. Suppose a person is careless about the situation in the state and goes to another state to campaign for the election of another party. In that case, such a person is useless to run the government. Such a person has no right to be in the government,” said Thackeray during a press conference in Mumbai.
“He (Shinde) calls himself the son of a poor farmer, but when the state’s farmers are suffering due to the unprecedented crisis, he is going to Telangana to campaign for another party. Doesn’t he have shame? “Thackeray, who preceded Shinde as the Maharashtra chief minister, asked. Thackeray said, as per his information, crops on around one lakh hectares of farmland had been destroyed due to rain and hailstorms. He asked Shiv Sena (UBT) members to visit the farmers’ fields whose crops had been destroyed and help them get insurance money through government offices in every district. He questioned what the state government was doing at such a time when farmers were in trouble and demanded an immediate cabinet meeting to help the farmers. Thackeray announced that he would also visit the villages where farmers suffered crop loss and targeted Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah.
“PM Modi and Amit Shah have time to go and watch the cricket World Cup final match. But Modi had no time to visit Manipur when it was burning. Today, he is going to poll-bound states to campaign for his party and making huge promises and announcements there. But doesn’t he have time to visit Maharashtra during a crisis? When will the BJP announce something for the state that was already facing drought and now, in addition to it, coping with unseasonal rain and hailstorms?” he asked.
Shinde is seeking votes for the BJP at Adilabad in Telangana on Tuesday, the last day of campaigning, ahead of the Assembly poll to elect 119 MLAs on Thursday, November 30. Poll results for Telangana and four other states — Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Mizoram and Rajasthan — will come out on December 3.
