Amid Row With Shinde Camp, Aditya Thackeray Says 'There's One Sena, Others Traitors'

Terming the current Maharashtra government as "highly autocratic, highly dictatorial and opaque", Yuva Sena president Aaditya Thackeray said on Tuesday that there`s only one Shiv Sena and the others are "gaddars" (traitors). "They (Eknath Shinde group) have tried to steal everything from us, they`ve tried to steal our party logo and party name. They`re trying to do everything they can. But the fact of the matter is: Someone who has run away with everything can only be tagged as a chor (thief), nothing beyond that," he said, while interacting with the students of GITAM (Deemed to be University) at its Hyderabad campus, as part of a Changemakers session moderated by Smita Sharma, visiting faculty, Kautilya School of Public Policy.

"It is sad to see that Maharashtra -- which was competing amongst the top five states in the Covid times and was one of the top players in terms of investment, tourism, sustainability, urban growth -- is now lagging. During our time as MVA government, we saw zero incidence of communal violence, everyone worked together, the state had Rs 6.5 lakh crore as investment coming in, we had multiple MoUs for factories coming up there. "Today, look at where Maharashtra is. We have an unconstitutional government, which is keeping aside the constitution and running a government which is highly autocratic, highly dictatorial, and opaque. We`re not one of the most attractive states for investment, because of political instability," said the Shiv Sena-UBT leader and MLA from Mumbai`s Worli.

"At least some people in the past had the guts to call an Emergency an Emergency - Today we`re in an undeclared Emergency. To completely knock out any opposition and alternate voices is troublesome for a country," he said. Reaffirming his faith in people and judiciary, Thackeray iterated that it`s very crucial to see which debates we choose for ourselves. "What we engage in our country today is religion vs religion, region vs region -- everything apart from the core issues. Are we debating unemployment, inflation, and problems we face as citizens? We`re not debating the right things, we`re fighting over something that happened 50-60 years ago, over the personalities that lived 100 years ago or whether some king/emperor did the right thing. But we are not fighting for the future. What will our future generations think?"