MUMBAI — Shiv Sena (UBT) President Uddhav Thackeray on Saturday asked all his cadres to prepare for the possibility of a mid-term Assembly elections in Maharashtra anytime.
“There can be mid-term polls in Maharashtra for which we must be prepared at every level,” Thackeray informed a closed-door meeting of Assembly segment-level party workers, asking them to get cracking.
Sena (UBT) chief spokesperson and MP Arvind Sawant said, “An unconstitutional government is in place in the state. Whenever the Supreme Court decision comes, you know what will be the fate of this government.”
He added that with Prime Minister Narendra Modi announcing projects worth Rs 2 lakh crore for the state, mid-term elections are on the cards, though the state Assembly’s tenure is till October 2024.
“Similar to the packages announced for Gujarat and Himachal Pradeesh to lure the voters, the PM’s latest announcement is an indicator that even Maharashtra can have early polls,” Sawant pointed out.
Though there is no clarity on the kind of projects that Maharashtra will get, the government of Chief Minister Eknath Shinde and Deputy CM Devendra Fadnavis has been under fire for the series of big-ticket projects that have gone to Gujarat in the past few weeks.
They include the Vedanta-Foxconn deal and the Tata-Airbus venture which have gone to Gujarat, and the bulk drugs project, among others, which have gone to other states with the opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi comprising Sena (UBT), Nationalist Congress Party and Congress crying foul.
However, senior BJP leader and MLC Pravin Darekar ridiculed Thackeray’s contention, saying that ever since it came to power (June 30), the Shinde-Fadnavis government has been doing very well and taking a lot of people-oriented decisions.
“There is no talk of any such thing happening at the government or the party level. Thackeray is making such claims to keep his people from straying… There’s no truth in the claims of midterm polls,” Darekar said. — IANS