New Delhi: Maharashtra chief minister Uddhav Thackeray was not present at an event in Mumbai where Prime Minister Narendra Modi was given the first Lata Deenanath Mangeshkar award.
At a function held at Shanmukhanand Hall in Mumbai on Sunday evening, Modi was given the award, instituted after the late singing legend.
Shiv Sena leader and state industries minister Subhash Desai attended the function, even though Thackeray did not.
State governor B.S. Koshyari and former chief minister Devendra Fadnavis were among those who were present, Free Press Journal has reported.
Maharashtra minister and Nationalist Congress Party leader Jitendra Awhad tweeted a copy of the invitation card of the award ceremony, noting that it did not mention the name of Uddhav Thackeray.
“The Mangeshkar family avoided mentioning the name of the Chief Minister on the invitation card of the Lata Mangeshkar Award Ceremony. Their role [behaviour] is incomprehensible. This act of the Mangeshkars is an insult to 12 crore Marathi people,” Awhad tweeted in Marathi.
Instead, in what is seen as a snub to the Bharatiya Janata Party, Thackeray and his family members met 80-year-old Chandrabhaga Shinde, who became the face of protests by Shiv Sena workers against Independent MP Navneet Rana and her MLA husband Ravi Rana a day earlier, at her residence in Parel, in the evening.
Shinde, a Shiv Sena member, had braved the heat and humidity as she sat outside ‘Matoshree’, the private residence of the Thackerays in suburban Bandra on Saturday.
She and hundreds of Shiv Sena members had protested against a plan by MP Navneet Rana and MLA Ravi Rana to recite the Hanuman Chalisa outside the chief minister’s house.
Thackeray’s wife Rashmi and sons Aaditya and Tejas accompanied him to Shinde’s one-room flat in Crescent Bay building in Parel, a Sena stronghold.
Sena functionaries said minister Aaditya had spoken to Shinde over the phone after her images and videos went viral on social media during the protests on Friday and Saturday, while the CM had invited her inside ‘Matoshree’. During his visit on Sunday, the CM once again invited Shinde to his home in Bandra or the official residence ‘Varsha’ in Mumbai’s Malabar Hill area, they said.
This is not the first time this Uddhav Thackeray has skipped an event featuring Modi as the tussle between the two parties – which used to be allies until 2019 – grows.
Indian Express has reported that on March 6, 2022, Thackeray remained away from a function in Pune in which Modi inaugurated the Pune Metro rail project. Shiv Sena had then said that Thackeray was recovering from surgery and thus could not attend.
(With PTI inputs)