MUMBAI: A day after Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis told Uddhav Thackeray of Shiv Sena-UBT to “join us” in a lighter moment in the Legislative Council, both had a closed-door meeting for over 20 minutes on Thursday. This is the third meeting between them in the last two days.
The meeting was held in the antechamber of Vidhan Parishad Chairman Ram Shinde at Vidhan Bhavan. It was organised to hand over a Marathi book to the chief minister and ask him not to impose Hindi as a third language from primary school in Maharashtra.
The title of the book is “Why Hindi should not be imposed”. It is a compilation of articles written by several editors in Maharashtra. Aaditya Thackeray was also present at the meeting, which also discussed the three-language policy, sources said. Fadnavis accepted the book, but suggested that Thackeray submit a copy to Narendra Jadhav, the head of the committee formed to review the decisions on the three-language policy.
Sources said that Uddhav Thackeray has demanded that the Speaker allow the post of Leader of the Opposition to his party. He had recommended the name of Bhaskar Jadhav at the last state assembly session. Thackeray has been pressing for this demand and pursuing Fadnavis, contending that with 20 MLAs, his party was the largest opposition party.
Bhaskar Jadhav has the consensus of the Opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi. However, Speaker Rahul Narvekar has not taken any decision in this regard, and the CM has said it is the Speaker’s prerogative to decide. The reason cited for the delay is that no opposition party has legislators representing 10 per cent of the total assembly strength of 288.
The meeting comes a day after the Chief Minister sparked widespread merriment in the state assembly with his public invitation to Uddhav Thackeray to join the ruling alliance, sparking massive speculation.
Speaking during the during the farewell ceremony of Ambadas Danve, the Leader of Opposition in the Council and a member of Thackeray’s faction of the Shiv Sena, Fadnavis told Thackeray: “Look Uddhav-ji, there is no scope of (our) going there (in the opposition) till 2029... But if you want to come over here, then consider it... it depends on you... it can be considered”.