NDA govt in talks with Dawood for his return: Raj Thackeray

“There has been no change in the country under this government, barring the fact that the colour of the currency in the country has changed,” Thackeray said.

Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) president Raj Thackeray on Thursday claimed that the BJP-led NDA government was negotiating with fugitive gangster Dawood Ibrahim for his return to India and the BJP was planning to use his return as a ploy to win elections in the country.

“They will rake up new issues as the elections come close. I have understood their ploy. Dawood wants to come back. He is handicapped because of an ailment and wants to die in his own country. He is now doing some settlement with the Centre. It is his wish to return. However, they will claim that it was them who brought him here,” Raj Thackeray said while addressing a gathering during the launch of his Facebook page on Thursday.

Once an ardent admirer of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Raj Thackeray, who is trying to revive the political fortunes of his own party, launched a scathing attack on Modi as well as the BJP saying that both were manipulating facts and events to gain electoral benefit in the upcoming polls. “What is the need of taking the Japanese Prime Minister to Ahmedabad and not meet him in Delhi? The truth is that the BJP used the Japanese PM as a campaigning tool for the elections in Gujarat,” Thackeray said.

He claimed that the BJP and its supporters lied through their teeth to win elections. But these days, people had started realising the truth. Thackeray said: “It is only now that a section of the public on social media has gone against them, that Amit Shah has spoken out and said that people should not believe in social media. But that is how you managed to win elections.”

He acknowledged that he had supported the idea of seeing Narendra Modi as the Prime Minister but claimed that he was now disenchanted with the government. “Just like Bhakts on social media blindly supported Modi, I acknowledge I did that too. I thought he may usher in some change and do good for the country. However, it is our misfortune that the government does not do anything but give hollow promises,” Thackeray said. He claimed that projects like Make in India and the tallest statue in the world of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, which the BJP had been harping on, have now been forgotten. “There has been no change in the country under this government, barring the fact that the colour of the currency in the country has changed,” Thackeray said.

He also claimed that there was a conspiracy to break away Mumbai from the rest of Maharashtra and the alignment of the bullet train connecting Mumbai to Ahmedabad was aimed at that. He also said the alignment of Mumbai Metro was being done in such a way that local Marathi residents would be displaced from their houses, which would then be converted to highrises for the rich.

After sustaining a slew of electoral reverses as well as defections, Raj Thackeray is trying hard to make his party relevant in state politics. The MNS managed to win only 13 seats in the 10 municipal corporations in the state compared to the 2012 polls when the party got 112 corporators elected.

The party, which in 2009 had 13 MLAs, presently does not have a single representative in the Maharashtra Assembly. Its lone representative elected on an MNS symbol had quit the party to set up his own organisation in February this year. The MNS managed to secure only 3.9 lakh votes in the recently-held elections — only 7.8 per cent of the total votes polled. Even new entrants like AIMIM managed to win double the number of seats compared to the MNS.