Won`t allow Pak cricketers to play here, says Bal Thackeray

Mumbai: Days after his nephew Raj opposed - albeit briefly - a TV show featuring Pak artistes, Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray on Saturday said he would not allow Pakistani cricketers to play here.

"I won`t allow them to play here. I have not reneged on my words and won`t do so," Thackeray said, in the second part of a marathon interview published in the party mouthpiece "Saamana". The Sena patriarch also claimed that if he was given charge of the military, he would perform a miracle and set things right in the country within a month. The Azad Maidan violence on August 11, protest opposing the alleged attacks on Muslims in Myanmar and the riots in Assam, was "pre-planned," Thackeray said. Muslims had started riots in Mumbai after the Babri masjid demolition. Even the Godhra carnage was pre-planned, he commented. Shiv Sena and the Raj Thackeray-led Maharashtra Navnirman Sena condemned the Azad Maidan violence, Thackeray said, but "Where were the people who paralysed Parliament," he asked. Thackeray also warned that he would not "spare" Muslim fundamentalists who fomented trouble in the country. "I will not allow a single fanatic Pakistani and Bangladeshi Muslim to live in Maharashtra and right up to Jammu and Kashmir where we have branches," the 86-year-old leader said. Asked about the political situation in Delhi, Thackeray said, "I have been saying for a long time that anarchy is imminent. We are on the brink of anarchy. I feel (general) elections will happen before 2014. This is my prediction." Asked about his decision to back UPA nominee Pratibha Patil during the 2007 presidential poll, Thackeray said the Congress and NCP leaders who met him then had at first proposed the name of Shivraj Patil. "I told them clearly that I won`t support this person who always wears neatly ironed clothes. After that one or two more names cropped up. I said I won`t support these people. I was not even aware that it is going to be Pratibha Patil (as their nominee). "I thought that the President`s post is coming to Maharashtra after 60 years and this opportunity should not be lost. What could I say when they (Congress) nominated her. I could not have taken the stance that I won`t support her even it meant Maharashtra losing the chance to have its President," Thackeray said. On criticism over Maharashtra Police action of nabbing a criminal from Bihar, Thackeray said, why should anyone get angry over the same. "In our country, for whom are the laws made, for people or for dangerous terrorists? If we are not to arrest dangerous terrorists from your state, then at least ensure that they don`t come to our state and start riots, before raising a hue and cry over the Maharashtra Police action," Thackeray said, without naming Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar. PTI