Now the Shiv Sena too has decided to get tough with migrants from North India to ensure that Raj Thackeray do not walk away with the votes of the Marathi manoos.
MUMBAI: Now the Shiv Sena too has decided to get tough with migrants from North India to ensure that Raj Thackeray and his Maharashtra Navnirman Sena do not walk away with the votes of the Marathi manoos.
On Thursday, the 81-year-old party supremo Bal Thackeray used Saamna to criticise chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh’s appeal to north Indians to stay put in the state. Thackeray said the government should immediately do away with the open-door policy that was responsible for “overburdening Mumbai”.
He also wanted north Indian members of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation to use Marathi for official purposes. Telling “Uttar Bharati corporators” not to raise the Hindi slogan in the BMC, Thackeray wrote: “BMC has and will always function in Marathi.”
The Sena chief said today “they are demanding Hindi in BMC. Tomorrow they will raise the demand for Hindi in Mantralaya and Vidhan Bhavan. This happens in Mumbai because of the administration’s failure.”
“Can these migrants behave the same way in Bangalore, Kolkata and Guwahati?” he asked.
“I can understand Deshmukh’s compulsion. But the least he can do is not treat Mumbai as a milch cow to fill the coffers of Delhi and reduce the city into a begging bowl.”
Thackeray said the tall towers that had come up across the city by and for migrants had made life difficult for the middle class and “poor bhoomiputra”.
“There is a limit to how much the outsiders should exploit the city,” he said.
Ever since Raj Thackeray’s MNS started targeting north Indians, the Shiv Sena think-tank had been trying damage-control to ensure that Uddhav Thackeray is not eclipsed by his cousin as leader of the Marathi manoos. Senior Sena leaders have started pressuring public sector units and airlines, demanding a share of jobs for Maharashtrians.
Senior party leader Subash Desai said, “On February 27, we are going to celebrate Marathi Bhasha Diwas to commemorate the birth anniversary of noted Marathi litterateur V V Shirwadkar alias Kusumagraj.”
But he denied that the celebrations were announced to counter the MNS agitation, arguing, “In 1966, (Bal) Thackeray founded the Sena for Marathi manoos.”
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