Raj Thackeray Is ‘Frog’ for Chavan, ‘Rat’ for Uddhav

Calling names in Maharashtra Assembly election campaign is getting lower and lower as the date for poll draws near, with each political rival trying to pull other’s leg with a befitting colourful phrase.

Of late, chief minister Ashok Chavan called MNS chief Raj Thackeray a frog’ during a press conference in his hometown Nanded recently.

In the conference, he said that Raj Thackeray and other opponents are like frogs who appear on ground during the monsoon and start croaking.

It should be noted that Chavan is the latest leader to have used such colourful or figurative, whatever it actually is, language, the most frequent practitioners of which are estranged Thackeray cousins.

In addition, Shiv Sena executive president Uddhav Thackeray had likened Raj to a “contractor working on commission for the Congress-NCP combine”.

In response, Raj said that Uddhav was like “aitya bilawar nagoba” (a Marathi phrase, meaning a snake always claims a readymade home instead of toiling for it), an indirect taunt for passage on Sena’s leadership to Uddhav by his father Bal Thackeray.

Uddhav, subsequently, rapped Raj for criticizing the Sena-BJP alliance but staying silent about Congress-NCP combine “for fear that he would be put into a cage like a rat (as Raj was but behind the bars)” if he dared attack the ruling front.

Even 83-year-old Bal Thackeray, not lagging behind anyone, earlier termed nephew Raj as “Jinnah of Maharashtra, who was out to divide Marathi people at the behest of Cogress”.

Uddhav even went to the extent of commenting that MNS chief was not a superman but a ‘supariman’. Word ‘supari’ is underworld slang for contract killing.

“He has taken ‘supari’ on behalf of Congress-NCP,” Uddhav said.