BMC Polls: CM Fadnavis plays old ‘rivalry' clips of Thackeray cousins as campaigning ends today | Watch

BMC Polls: Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on Monday slammed Uddhav Thackeray, the president of the recently united Shiv Sena (UBT) and MNS leader Raj Thackeray, saying the 15 January Mumbai civic body poll is a battle of survival for the cousins, not for the Marathi people.

Addressing a rally in support of the BJP-Shiv Sena alliance, the penultimate day of campaigning for BMC polls, Fadnavis asserted that Mumbai is an inseparable part of Maharashtra and no one can dare to break it away.

Voting for 29 municipal corporations, including the BMC, in Maharashtra is scheduled for 15 January. More than 15,000 candidates are in the fray. In BMC alone, 1,700 candidates are contesting in 227 wards. The results will be announced on 16 January.

The campaigning for civic polls ends today.

At the rally for the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) elections at the iconic Shivaji Park, the CM showed old videos of Uddhav Thackeray and Raj Thackeray attacking each other. The cousins recently joined hands for the civic polls after a 20-year estrangement.

Fadnavis asked the organisers to play video clips of the Thackeray brothers, who parted ways in 2005, criticising each other in the past, and added there was no need for him to say anything else.

Responding to Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) chief Raj Thackeray's remarks that the Mumbai civic body election will be the last one for Marathi people, Fadnavis said, “Your own survival is at stake.”

“The (BMC) election is not about a threat to Mumbai, Marathi speakers, but your own survival,” he noted, referring to the Thackeray cousins, whose parties are pitted against the BJP-Shiv Sena combine to control India's biggest and richest civic body with over ₹74,000 crore budget.

Fadnavis, a former ally of Uddhav Thackeray, declared that his commitment was to install a Mahayuti mayor in Mumbai and usher the city into an era of transparent civic governance.

‘Shiv Sena failed to protect the interests of Marathi speakers’

“We will transform the city,” he vowed, appealing to people to vote for the BJP and Shiv Sena in Thursday's polls.

The CM criticised the undivided Shiv Sena over its two-decade-long rule in the BMC and questioned what its leadership had achieved for the Marathi speakers who are now being portrayed as living under threat.

“Despite holding power in civic governance for so many years, the (united) Shiv Sena failed to protect the interests of Marathi speakers. Those responsible for such a situation had no right to claim guardianship. You don't represent Mumbai or Marathi people,” Fadnavis asserted, attacking the Thackerays.

The CM said it was the Uddhav Thackeray-led Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) rule (November 2019-June 2022) that decided to make Hindi compulsory from Classes 1 to 12 in the state under the New Education Policy and also scrapped the Dharavi redevelopment tender floated by his government before 2019.

“When we came to power, we realised that the tender of the MVA government was not proper. We allotted the work to Dharavi Redevelopment Project (DPR) in which the state government is a major stakeholder and Adani group is the developer,” he said.

The mega project involves transforming Asia's largest slum, Dharavi, into a modern, planned township by providing permanent housing to its residents, besides building infrastructure and commercial spaces.

(With agency inputs)