Mumbai: Either Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray)’s chief Uddhav Thackeray or his son Aaditya will join Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s ‘Bharat Jodo Yatra’, which enters Maharashtra next month, ThePrint has learnt.
The affirmation that the Sena will join the yatra — which completed over 1,000 km last week — came a day after a delegation of the Congress party met Thackeray at his Mumbai residence, Matoshree, and invited him to join the Maharashtra leg of the yatra, which begins on 6 November.
The delegation, which was led by Congress’ Maharashtra in-charge H.K. Patil and had senior leaders from the party such as Balasaheb Thorat and Ashok Chavan, also met Nationalist Congress Party chief Sharad Pawar at the Yashwantrao Chavan Centre to invite him to join the 3,570-km yatra.
Speaking to ThePrint, a source in the Congress said that Thackeray told the party that if he and his son both can’t make it to the yatra, one of them will mark the Sena’s presence. Likewise, Pawar has promised to join the yatra, as has his daughter Supriya Sule, the source added.
“Rahul Gandhi is on the Bharat Jodo Yatra and we are inviting our partners and friends to join us on it,” Maharashtra Congress president Nana Patole told ThePrint. “Lakhs of people are joining Rahul Gandhi every day. So, tomorrow, nobody should tell us that they wanted to join but we didn’t invite them.”
Once it enters Maharashtra through Deglur in Nanded — the turf of senior leader Ashok Chavan — on 6 November, the Bharat Jodo Yatra, currently in Andhra Pradesh, is scheduled to cover 383 km in 16 days in the state before it heads to Madhya Pradesh.
Rahul is expected to address 10 public meetings as he makes his journey across Maharashtra.
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Thawing ties, growing closeness
From his opposition to allying with the Shiv Sena to form the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government to asking Thackeray to join his yatra, Rahul Gandhi’s relationship with the Sena leader has come a long way.
In 2019, Rahul had reportedly opposed an alliance with the Sena for ideological reasons and was upset with senior party leaders like the late Ahmed Patel for having brokered it.
However, as time passed, Rahul was seen softening his stand — especially in the face of the growing bitterness between the Sena and its old ally, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and also in view of the Sena’s praises of him.
This growing closeness between the two parties showed — in January 2020, Aaditya met Rahul in Delhi, two months after their parties forged an alliance.
In his speech at the Sena’s Dussehra rally earlier this month, Uddhav said that when his own people “deceived him”, it was Sonia Gandhi and Sharad Pawar who stood by him.
The speech came almost two months after internal strife and a subsequent rebellion within the Shiv Sena caused the Uddhav-led MVA to collapse, making way for a new government under rebel Sena leader Eknath Shinde.
After Congress extended its support to Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) candidate Rutuja Latke in next month’s Andheri East bypoll, Uddhav reportedly called Sonia to thank her.
On his part, Rahul came out in support of the arrested Sena Member of Parliament Sanjay Raut in August and accused the ruling BJP of political vendetta.
“The message of ‘king’ is clear — anyone who speaks against me will suffer,” Rahul said in a tweet on 1 August, soon after Raut’s arrest on charges of money laundering in connection with Mumbai’s Patra Chawl project. “Efforts are on to break the morale of the opponents and silence the voice of the truth by misusing government agencies.”
Despite this growing closeness, though, Gandhi has never visited Uddhav Thackeray in Mumbai, not even after the forging of the MVA alliance.
(Edited by Uttara Ramaswamy)
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