Mumbai: Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and Sena Executive President Uddhav Thackeray, on Friday, for the first time shared the dais for a joint press conference of the ‘Mahayuti’ (grand alliance) on the last day of filing of the nominations for the upcoming Maharashtra State assembly elections.
Uddhav was accompanied by his son and candidate from the Worli constituency Aaditya Thackeray. “Aaditya will be joining us in the assembly and he will win the elections with a high margin of votes,” Fadnavis said.
While the Sena has been portraying Aaditya as a Chief Ministerial candidate, when reporters asked Sena's reaction on the issue, Uddhav chose to remain silent.
The press meet also saw bigwigs from both Shiv Sena and the BJP including leaders like Manohar Joshi, Ashish Shelar, Chandrakant Patil, Eknath Shinde, Neelam Gorhe and others during the press meet held in Mahila Vikas Hall in Nariman Point.
Fadnavis attacked the rebel BJP leaders and said that there is no place for rebellion in our party. “We ask our rebels to stay away from the election process in two days or we will show them their place. But despite all this rebellion, we will emerge winners.”
The party also shared its seat sharing formula wherein the BJP will fight for 150 seats, while the Sena has settled with 124 seats and the remaining 14 seats has been left for the smaller alliance parties of the grand alliance.
When asked Uddhav on how strong is the bond between the Sena and BJP especially at a time when the opposition has been claiming that the Sena has been given a step-brotherly treatment by the BJP, Uddhav said, “There is nothing like big or small brother. It is just that we are brothers and our bonding is strong which is essential.”
Speaking on the senior BJP leaders like Vindo Tawde, Eknath Khadse and Prakash Mehta being denied tickets, Fadnavis said that no leader needs to get worried about it as this is just a change in the responsibilities which they were handling. “We have distributed tickets to the deserving people. It doesn’t mean that they were not responsible. This is just a change in responsibility. We will to those leaders and surely resolve this soon,” Fadnavis said.
