Raj Thackeray finally relents to cadres, announces MNS will contest assembly polls

Mumbai: Bowing to the wishes of the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) cadres, Raj Thackeray announced that the MNS will contest the Oct. 21 state assembly elections. Speaking to newspersons here on Monday the MNS president further announced that he will address his first election rally on October 5. Asked to spell out details of this plans, he said that he would start speaking what is on his mind beginning from October 5.

Earlier, addressing party cadres he announced that the MNS will contest the assembly elections and shall also win. The candidatures and the seats which we shall contest will be announced in the next couple of days. Sources disclosed that following the recent Lok Sabha polls, the MNS chief was less inclined to contest the assembly elections citing economic slowdown and rising costs of contesting elections.

Although he did not make it clear as to how many seats the MNS would contest, sources in the MNS disclosed that the party will contest around 125 seats, in areas where it has good support base. Sources further disclosed that though the MNS may not formally enter into any pre-poll alliance with any of the opposition parties, a broad tacit understanding between the opposition Congress and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and MNS is being worked out wherein the MNS will field its candidates against the Sena and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Mumbai, Thane, Nashik and Pune region to ensure splitting the saffron vote bank.

It may be recalled that during the recent 2019 Lok Sabha elections when he attacked the ruling BJP with his famous quip, “Laav Re Toh Video” (Play That Video) at his public meetings, earning the ire of the government, as his party was not contesting any seat.

Later, in August, the MNS president was summoned by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) for questioning in an alleged case of financial irregularities in one of his business ventures, along with his other partners.

This time around however, the MNS is entering the assembly poll fray with an assortment of rivals arrayed against it. Besides the ruling BJP and Sena, the MNS will have to deal with Prakash Ambedkar led Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi, Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul-Musilmeen (MIM) to name just a few.