Motormouth Shiv Sena leader Sanjay Raut announced on Wednesday that Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray will visit Ayodhya to mark the completion of a hundred days in power.
Chalo Ayodhya ! CM #UddhavThackeray will visit Ayodhya on the completion of 100 days in power! @OfficeofUT
— Sanjay Raut (@rautsanjay61) January 22, 2020
Raut said that Uddhav Thackeray will seek the blessings of Shri Rama and has urged his alliance partners to come along.
Shiv Sena leader Sanjay Raut: Maharashtra CM Uddhav Thackeray will visit Ayodhya on the completion of 100 days in power, to seek the blessings of Lord Ram. We want that our alliance leaders should also come along. Rahul Gandhi also visits several temples. pic.twitter.com/AHwfDuwGoG
— ANI (@ANI) January 22, 2020
Raut’s appeal to his alliance partners appears to be a subtle dig at the Congress party who have been trampling over the Shiv Sena ever since the government was formed. Raut’s comment that Rahul Gandhi ‘visits several temples’ comes across as a thinly-veiled mockery of the former Congress President’s periodical Temple Run.
The Shiv Sena leader’s excitement was palpable on Twitter as well where he gave the slogan of ‘Chalo Ayodhya’. The slogan is closely associated with the attempts made by Hindutvavadis over the years to reclaim Ram Janmabhoomi.
The planned visit by Uddhav Thackeray is a not-so-subtle attempt by Shiv Sena to emphasize its Hindutva credentials. It comes only days after senior Congress leader and former Maharashtra CM Ashok Chavan had admitted that the Congress party had entered the alliance after approval from the Muslim community.
The Shiv Sena and the Congress party have also been at loggerheads over the legacy of Vinayak Damodar Savarkar. Only on Saturday, Sanjay Raut had advised the detractors of Veer Savarkar to spend two days at the Andaman Cellular Jail in an obvious dig at the Congress party and its former president Rahul Gandhi.
Not too long ago, Sanjay Raut had triggered a massive controversy when he revealed that former PM Indira Gandhi used to visit Karim Lala, one of the three most powerful underworld dons of Mumbai. Raut’s remark had sparked massive outrage from the Congress party following which he was forced to retract his statement.
