Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray is usually not known for his sense of humour. People have always attributed the oratory skills to both his father the late Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thackeray, and Uddhav's cousin, Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) chief Raj Thackeray.
However, Uddhav Thackeray had a number of people in splits last Friday, during a speech at an award ceremony where Maharashtra won the State of the Year Award.
During the speech, Uddhav Thakckeray said that he already had two awards in they city, and pointed at industrialist Mukesh Ambani and HDFC Chairman Deepak Parekh.
He then took a dig at Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, who took his jokes in good jest. "Before I became chief minister, I did not know too much about budgets," Thackeray is heard saying. "However, after becoming CM, people would come and ask me what I felt about the budget a day before it is presented to the public," he said, much to the amusement of the crowd present. "I had to give my standard reply: the rich will get richer and the poor will get poorer," he added, much to the shock of the finance minister, whose expression is worthy of becoming a meme.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman's expression says it all | Twitter Screenshot - CNBC-TV18 News
Thackeray went on to add that the hallmark of a good finance minister was to present a budget that made people realise that they weren't getting affected. Turning to Nirmala Sitharaman, Thackeray then asked, "Would you think of yourself as a good finance minister?" The finance minister saw the funny side to the question, much like the crowd.
With the Maharashtra budget coming up, we wonder what's in store for the state. Last week, the state government presented supplementary demands worth Rs 24,723 crore in the state legislature. Of which as high as Rs 15,000 crore has been earmarked for the Maha Vikas Aghadi government's ambitious crop loan waiver scheme named after leading social activist Mahatma Jyotiba Phule.
