Shiv Sena leader Uddhav Thackeray targeted former ally Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) saying it is trying to take the country towards dictatorship through the sham Hindutva.
Without naming BJP, he said they want to have an iron grip on India and referred to China. The country is heading towards dictatorship. Their Hindutva is a sham create a wall of caution under the guise of Hindutva and harden the grip on the country so that no one can dare say anything, he said.
Uddhav said he had gone to China ahead of the Beijing Olympics when he met with an interpreter. I told him why he didn’t go to Beijing to earn money as he was speaking good English. He replied that he wanted to be alive. When questioned further, he told us that whosoever speaks against the (Chinese) government in Beijing, disappears in two days. They want to have a similar iron grip here (in India), he said in a veiled reference to BJP.
He said BJP wants to make Mumbai bankrupt and accused the party of eyeing multi-crore fixed deposits (FDs) the Mumbai civic body has in savings in banks. Uddhav was replying to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s speech in Mumbai on Thursday wherein the latter referred to the money that is being kept in banks instead of being used for the city’s development.
Even the BJP has accepted that it cannot fetch votes without invoking Bal Thackeray, the Shiv Sena leader said. On PM Modi inaugurating and laying foundation stones for infrastructure projects in Mumbai where civic polls are due, Thackeray said this could happen only because the Shiv Sena did the groundwork for three years.