A day after Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) President Raj Thackeray’s stringent criticism of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ‘Gujarat-oriented’ policies, MNS activists targeted Gujarati establishments in Mumbai and Palghar on Monday. A group of MNS workers took to the roads and went around attacking restaurants and other business establishments sporting Gujarati signboards in Mumbai and near Vasai on the Mumbai-Ahmedabad Highway. The workers, many carrying MNS flags, raised anti-Gujarati slogans and damaged or defaced signboards in Gujarati language.
“Vasai is in Maharashtra and not Gujarat
At least a dozen persons have been detained in connection with the two incidents and police have increased patrolling in some Gujarati-dominated pockets. In his hard-hitting Gudi Padwa rally in Mumbai late on Sunday, Raj Thackeray criticized Modi, Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and BJP
He attacked the PM’s dream project of Mumbai-Ahmedabad bullet train that would cost Rs 110 lakh crore and the proposed Mumbai-Vadodara Expressway at Rs 22,000 crore and the shifting of Air India
Accusing Modi of being partial to Gujarat, he questioned the need to take all foreign dignitaries to Ahmedabad and not to other cities like Chennai or Bengaluru or Mumbai. To prove his point, he read out a list of international VVIPs who have visited Gujarat in the past four years or so, including from China and Japan.
Warning of the possibility of communal riots being engineered in the name of the Babri Mosque-Ram Temple row to win the next Lok Sabha elections