GUWAHATI: At least two huge hoardings propagating Hindutva and throwing weight behind rebel Shiv Sena leader Eknath Shinde have come up in Guwahati.
They have pictures of Eknath Shinde, Bal Thackeray and Anand Dighe.
One has been put up near the five-star Radisson Blu hotel where the Shinde-led dissident Sena MLAs have been holed up since Wednesday morning and another at Tetelia on the city outskirts.
The hoardings have an identical slogan – “Garb Se Kaho Hum Hindu Hain, Shinde Sahab Hum Aapke Saath Hain” (Tell proudly that we are Hindus. Sir Shinde, we are with you).
Nobody knows who put up these hoardings. Assam’s ruling BJP denied putting them up. “We are not involved in the Shiv Sena matters in any manner,” a BJP leader said.
The Shiv Sena has its Assam unit. Its leaders did not take phone calls. However, M Tombi Singh, who is Shiv Sena’s Manipur president, said the party did not put up the hoardings.
“We did not do it. If these have indeed come up, we will bring them down,” Singh told The New Indian Express on Tuesday, adding, “We will soon put up posters and hoardings of Balasaheb and Uddhavji.”
He was picked up by the police from near Radisson Blu and taken to a police station on Monday. He had gone to the hotel area to make an appeal to the Sena rebels to patch up.
Some 70 Sena leaders and workers from Manipur, Tripura and different parts of Assam are camping in Guwahati, he said.
An observer said by putting up the hoardings, some people were making an attempt to motivate the Sena rebels as these would be shown by the media.
Meanwhile, sources said the MLAs were not being allowed to venture out. The same could not be verified. The hotel has been virtually turned into a fortress with 200-300 security personnel guarding it round-the-clock.