By Quaid Najmi

Mumbai, Mar 26 (IANS): In one of the bitterest attacks till date, Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray on Friday accused the Opposition Bharatiya Janata Party of being a 'pervert' and dared it to arrest him if it wanted to grab power in Maharashtra.

Coming three days after his brother-in-law faced action by the Enforcement Directorate (ED), Thackeray also questioned the corruption allegations levelled by the BJP and the actions of various central probe agencies to defame the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government, its leaders and their families.

"I am not scared by these tactics. If you want to jail me to come to power then do it... Put me in a cell like Lord Krishna. But don't indulge in such vicious tactics to grab power. Don't harass us or our family members. We never bothered your family members," Thackeray declared.

The Chief Minister recalled how Indira Gandhi had declared Emergency, but now we are in a state of 'undeclared Emergency' and said "it needs great courage to declare a public Emergency".

Wondering if the ED has become the maid-servant of the BJP, especially after the arrests of former home minister Anil Deshmukh and later Nawab Malik, the Chief Minister took strong umbrage at the Opposition for linking Malik and the MVA in general with the fugitive don Dawood Ibrahim Kaskar, and exploiting the absconder mafiosi's name in elections.

Taking a swipe at Devendra Fadnavis's 2-man 80-hour long government, Thackeray said if the early morning oath ceremony experiment had succeeded, "then Malik and Deshmukh would have been sitting in the BJP's lap".

He recalled how the former state BJP home minister, the late Gopinath Munde had promised to bring back Dawood, but it has not yet happened.

"Former US President Barack Obama displayed guts by sending his commandos to Pakistan to kill the Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. Why similar courage has not been shown to deal with Dawood?" Thackeray asked pointedly without naming Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

On another BJP charge, the Chief Minister said that a Waqf Board member was elected when the BJP-led government was in power, with the appointment letter signed in green ink by the then minister Vinod Tawde, who is now the BJP national general secretary.

Training guns on the Centre, Thackeray accused it of delaying crucial projects like the Mumbai Metro 3 line by not giving up its claim on the Kanjurmarg land for the metro car-shed and not releasing the 45 acres of railway land for the Dharavi redevelopment project to take-off.

On allegations of cost-escalation, he asked Urban Development Minister Eknath Shinde to probe the increased costs of the Mumbai Metro projects during the erstwhile Fadnavis-led government.

Referring to the BJP's taunts that he had abandoned Hindutva by allying with Nationalist Congress Party-Congress, Thackeray reiterated that he was very much a Hindutva proponent and reminded how it was the late Balasaheb Thackeray who supported the BJP which was isolated politically after the Babri Mosque razing (December 1992) and never regretted it.

The Chief Minister also blamed the BJP for disrupting the Budget Session opening day speech by Governor Bhagat Singh Koshyari, which was against the 'culture' of the state, adding such a thing was unprecedented in the country and should not have happened.

Continuing his spirited tirade against the BJP's charges after the state government allowed controlled sale of wine through supermarkets, he said the liquor consumption in some BJP-ruled states was much higher than Maharashtra.

He said Maharashtra has the lowest number of liquor shops per lakh population compared with other BJP-ruled states like Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh or Uttar Pradesh, and the Opposition-ruled Telangana and Tamil Nadu, and asked BJP to stop maligning this state.

To the Opposition's charges on corruption in the BrihanMumbai Municipal Corporation during the Covid-19 pandemic, Thackeray strongly rebuffed the BJP's allegations point by point and said the 'Mumbai Model' of Covid management has been hailed globally.

He said while the Opposition was welcome to point out any lapses which can be rectified, he asked the BJP to stop hurling baseless accusations.

Later, responding to the ripping speech, Fadnavis claimed that the Chief Minister failed to answer any points raised by the Opposition.