He was speaking at the Shiv Sena’s annual Dussehra rally at the NESCO grounds in Goregaon.
Shiv Sena chief leader and Maharashtra deputy CM Eknath Shinde on Tuesday put down the current nationwide protests against the Election Commission of India and the BJP to an “international conspiracy”.
“They stay in Hindustan and speak the language of Pakistan. This is unfortunate and an anti-India act. Meanwhile, former high court judge Srihari Davare, who also worked as a judge in the sessions court, special TADA court and narcotics court and was the chairman of the Police Complaints Authority, joined the Sena in the Dussehra rally. As sessions court judge, he had convicted Pravin Mahajan for the murder of his brother and BJP leader Pramod Mahajan.
He was referring to how he split the undivided Shiv Sena by taking 40 MLAs with him in 2022 and joining the BJP to topple the Thackeray government. To show what a large party he headed, the deputy CM made it a point to declare that his party had 15 MPs, 74 legislators, 1,100 corporators and 63 presidents of civic bodies. He said he had sent 100 truckloads of material to the drought-affected.
In a veiled attack on the Cockroach Janata Party and members of the opposition INDIA alliance, Shinde said they and foreign powers were behind the spreading of “anarchy”. “What they say will become headlines in Pakistan,” he said. Shinde added that the “nationalists of India” would remember this and “show them their place in the elections”. “If the nationalists come down on the streets, they will have to run for their lives,” he said. Referring to Shiv Sena (UBT) chief Uddhav Thackeray’s remarks that they wanted a regime change, the deputy CM snidely remarked that when the regime was changed in the Sena-run Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi government, Thackeray “did not even come to know”. He said that since the state was facing a drought, he had asked his partymen from the interiors of Maharashtra not to come to Mumbai. Davare said that he had joined the party to serve people.
The Congress wants ballot paper elections again, as they won by booth-capturing in the past. Taking another potshot at Thackeray, he said the real vote chori had happened in 2019 when Thackeray made a backdoor entry (without getting elected) as the CM.
Referring to the opposition’s charge that EVMs were being manipulated by the BJP and thus a return to ballot paper elections was necessary, Shinde said, “When they win, the EVM is good and when they lose, the EVM is bad.
