Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray dares 'pervert' BJP to jail him

In one of the bitterest attacks till date Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray on Friday accused the Opposition Bharatiya Janata Party of being a pervert and dared it to arrest him if it wanted to grab power in MaharashtraComing three days after his brotherinlaw faced action by the Enforcement Directorate ED Thackeray also questioned the corruption allegations leveled by the BJP and the actions of various central probe agencies to defame the Maha Vikas Aghadi MVA government its leaders and their familiesI am not scared by these tactics If you want to jail me to come to power then do it Put me in a cell like Lord Krishna But dont indulge in such vicious tactics to grab power Dont harass us or our family members We never bothered your family members Thackeray declaredThe Chief Minister recalled how Indira Gandhi had declared Emergency but now we are in a state of undeclared Emergency and said it needs great courage to declare a public EmergencyWondering if the ED has become the maidservant of the BJP especially after the arrests of former home minister Anil Deshmukh and later Nawab Malik the Chief Minister took strong umbrage at the Opposition for linking Malik and the MVA in general with the fugitive don Dawood Ibrahim Kaskar and exploiting the absconder mafiosis name in electionsTaking a swipe at Devendra Fadnaviss 2man 80hour long government Thackeray said if the early morning oath ceremony experiment had succeeded then Malik and Deshmukh would have been sitting in the BJPs lapHe recalled how the former state BJP home minister the late Gopinath Munde had promised to bring back Dawood but it has not yet happenedFormer US President Barack Obama displayed guts by sending his commandos to Pakistan to kill the Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden Why similar courage has not been shown to deal with Dawood Thackeray asked pointedly without naming Prime Minister Narendra ModiOn another BJP charge the Chief Minister said that a Waqf Board member was elected when the BJPled government was in power with the appointment letter signed in green ink by the then minister Vinod Tawde who is now the BJP national general secretaryTraining guns on the Centre Thackeray accused it of delaying crucial projects like the Mumbai Metro 3 line by not giving up its claim on the Kanjurmarg land for the metro carshed and not releasing the 45 acres of railway land for the Dharavi redevelopment project to takeoffOn allegations of costescalation he asked Urban Development Minister Eknath Shinde to probe the increased costs of the Mumbai Metro projects during the erstwhile Fadnavisled governmentReferring to the BJPs taunts that he had abandoned Hindutva by allying with Nationalist Congress PartyCongress Thackeray reiterated that he was very much a Hindutva proponent and reminded how it was the late Balasaheb Thackeray who supported the BJP which was isolated politically after the Babri Mosque razing December 1992 and never regretted itThe Chief Minister also blamed the BJP for disrupting the Budget Session opening day speech by Governor Bhagat Singh Koshyari which was against the culture of the state adding such a thing was unprecedented in the country and should not have happenedContinuing his spirited tirade against the BJPs charges after the state government allowed controlled sale of wine through supermarkets he said the liquor consumption in some BJPruled states was much higher than MaharashtraHe said Maharashtra has the lowest number of liquor shops per lakh population compared with other BJPruled states like Karnataka Madhya Pradesh or Uttar Pradesh and the Oppositionruled Telangana and Tamil Nadu and asked BJP to stop maligning this stateTo the Oppositions charges on corruption in the BrihanMumbai Municipal Corporation during the Covid19 pandemic Thackeray strongly rebuffed the BJPs allegations point by point and said the Mumbai Model of Covid management has been hailed globallyHe said while the Opposition was welcome to point out any lapses which can be rectified he asked the BJP to stop hurling baseless accusationsLater responding to the ripping speech Fadnavis claimed that the Chief Minister failed to answer any points raised by the OppositionThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever