Kicking off the Shiv Sena’s poll campaign, party chief Uddhav Thackeray will hold a mega rally in Nagpur – chief minister Devendra Fadnavis’s home turf – on February 2. Even as there is no clarity so far on an alliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the Sena has gone ahead with chalking out rallies and other tours of its party chief.
However, Sena leaders maintained that Thackeray’s address in Pandharpur on December 24, 2018 was its start of the poll campaign. Senior Sena leader Anandrao Adsul, an MP from Amravati, dismissed suggestions that Nagpur was chosen to kick-off the campaign as part of sending out any ‘signal’ to the BJP, which has a strong presence in the region. “We did one (rally) in Pandharpur, now we’ll do one in Nagpur. There is no specific reason behind selecting Nagpur; It is an important city in Vidarbha. It should not be viewed as Nagpur is a stronghold of the chief minister or [Union minister Nitin] Gadkari. Then whose stronghold was Pandharpur?” he asked.