Maha CM, governor like father-son, says Raut
In an interesting development, senior Shiv Sena leader Sanjay Raut met Maharashtra governor Bhagat Singh Koshyari for a “courtesy call” at Raj Bhavan on Saturday. The meeting came in the wake of reports of allegedly frosty relations between the Shiv Sena and the governor.
After the meeting, Mr Raut said that the governor and chief minister Uddhav Thackeray share relations like that between a father and a son. “The governor and the chief minister had no conflict between them. Mr Koshyari and My Thackeray share a fatherson relationship between them and it will remain like that,” he said.
Later, the Raj Bhavan tweeted a photograph of Mr Raut bending with folded hands in front of the governor. On this, the Sena leader tweeted, “Well! @bskoshayari is elder to me so this namaskar. Otherwise we had a good interaction, I told him not to worry, our MVA government under leadership of @officeofUT is running fine. (sic)”
Mr Raut’s visit to Raj Bhavan has raised eyebrows in political circles as just a few days ago, Mr Thackeray had skipped a meeting called by the governor to assess the state government’s preparedness to tackle the Covid-19 crisis in Maharashtra.
Ever since the results for the Maharashtra Vidhan Sabha polls were announced last year, the relation between the Sena and the governor has turned sour. The Sena was livid over Mr Koshyari’s decision to swear in BJP’s Devendra Fadnavis as a CM denying Mr Thackeray’s claims to form the government with the NCP and Congress despite having numbers on his side. The relationship further strained after the governor later did not respond to the state Cabinet’s decision to nominate Mr Thackeray as an MLC from the governor’s quota.