Mumbai: Two 18-coach trains, several hundred buses, and 700 aeroplane seats are ferrying thousands of Shiv Sena workers to Ayodhya ahead of their party leader Aaditya Thackeray’s visit to the Uttar Pradesh city on Wednesday.
The state environment and tourism minister, who turned 32 on June 13, will visit the site of the upcoming Ram mandir, offer prayers at the Hanuman Garhi temple and perform a ‘maha-aarti’ on the banks of river Saryu surrounded by his party workers.
While 8,000 of them from Thane, Nashik and Mumbai are expected to reach tonight, party MPs Arvind Sawant and Rajan Vichare as well as state cabinet minister Eknath Shinde will travel with Thackeray on Wednesday.
“This is not a show of strength, but a matter of faith for us,” said newly re-elected Sena parliamentarian Sanjay Raut, who is already in Ayodhya to make preparations for Thackeray’s three-day visit.
Aaditya’s itinerary includes a visit to the construction site of the Ram mandir. In 1992, Sena founder Bal Thackeray had proclaimed that it was a Shiv Sainik who had first struck at the Babri Masjid, which was eventually brought down.
Aaditya’s visit is intended to have two-fold impact: one, it aims to forge a deeper connection between the woke and urbane young leader and the party’s hardline rank and file, and two, it seeks to send out a turf message to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), with which it split ways in 2019 to form a coalition government with the Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP).
The BJP has been attacking the Sena for allying with secular parties, Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) to form the Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government, as a roll-back on its Hindu identity.
Recent agitations by the BJP-backed Ravi and Navneet Rana, who, in April, threatened to chant Hanuman Chalisa (a prayer) outside chief minister Uddhav Thackeray’s house, as well as Maharashtra Navnirman Sena chief Raj Thackeray’s protests against loudspeakers on mosques in April, were met with the Sena-led government’s measured insistence on maintaining law and order.
Given that the voter base of both the Sena and the BJP remains largely similar, Aaditya’s visit aims to shore up the Hindu vote.
One of the Sainiks Nitin Patil, who left from Thane on Monday said, “Lord Ram and the temple in Ayodhya are at the centre of our party’s ideology. This is not a political tour.”
Girish Raje, another Sainik accompanying him said, “The ties between Maharashtra and Ayodhya are not new. Shiv Sena has always worked for the Lord Ram’s temple and we are again visiting the temple, but this time under the leadership of Aaditya ji.”
On April 16, Aaditya announced his visit to the city after a gap of two years. “I will soon visit Ayodhya and seek the blessings of Lord Ram,” he had said.
