Mumbai: The Shiv Sena's 60th Dussehra rally split into two Mumbai stages on Tuesday, and both sides found the same three words: vote chori. Deputy Chief Minister Eknath Shinde addressed his faction at the NESCO Centre in Goregaon; former chief minister Uddhav Thackeray spoke at Shivaji Park in Dadar, where his father Bal Thackeray held the party's first rally in 1966.
Shinde said the real "vote theft" happened after the 2019 assembly elections, when the undivided Shiv Sena tied up with the NCP and Congress to form the Maha Vikas Aghadi government. "You made a backdoor entry and became chief minister. You stabbed the mandate," he said, without naming Thackeray. He described the INDIA bloc as a "ten-mouthed Ravana" whose effigy should be burnt, and called Rahul Gandhi's march to the Supreme Court an insult to the judiciary.
Turning to farmers, Shinde said he had dispatched the first 100 tonnes of foodgrains as an advance Diwali gift to drought-hit cultivators, and cited a Rs 32,000-crore framework for farm loan waivers.
Thackeray called for "regime change" and promised "acche din" once the BJP-led government at the Centre is dislodged. He said the young protesters who have hit the streets are "revolutionaries, not Naxalites," and claimed 13 crore voters' names had been deleted from electoral rolls. He mocked Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis over a recent attack on actor Tiger Shroff, dared him to confront jailed gangster Lawrence Bishnoi, and criticised RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat's remarks on protests.
Both leaders invoked Bal Thackeray's birth centenary. "We have to unfurl the saffron flag atop the Maharashtra Vidhan Sabha — and on Lal Qila too," Thackeray said.
There was arithmetic behind both rallies. Thackeray backed the youth movement and aimed at Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar: "Just as Vibhishana revealed that Ravana's life lay in his navel, their lifeline lies in Gyanesh Kumar." Shinde accused the Congress of looting the country over decades of rule, and alleged it was now demanding ballot papers after once winning through booth capturing. On both sides, workers spoke of law and order, unemployment and rising prices.