Mumbai: Campaigning for the October 13 Maharashtra Assembly elections seems to have reached a new low with key players in state political arena calling rivals names, including those of animals.
Chief Minister Ashok Chavan called the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) chief Raj Thackeray, a 'frog'.
"Raj Thackeray and other opponents are like frogs which appear on ground during the monsoon and start croaking," Chavan said during a press conference in his hometown Nanded recently.
Chavan is the latest in the long line of leaders who have used colourful language to deride opponents, the most visible practitioners of this 'art' being estranged Thackeray cousins.
Shiv Sena's executive president, Uddhav Thackeray, equated Raj to a 'contractor working on commission for the Congress-NCP combine'.
Raj responded, saying Uddhav was like aitya bilawar nagoba (a Marathi phrase, meaning a snake always claims a readymade home instead of toiling for it), a reference to the Sena's leadership passed on to Uddhav by his more illustrious father Bal Thackeray.
Uddhav riled Raj for criticsing the Sena-BJP alliance but refused to comment on Congress-NCP alliance saying, "for fear that he would be put into a cage like a rat" if he dared attack the ruling front.
Not to be left behind, the 83-year-old Bal Thackeray termed nephew Raj as "Jinnah of Maharashtra, who was out to divide Marathi people at the behest of Congress".
Alluding to Raj, Uddhav also took on Raj and said he wasn't a superman but a supari man. The term supari is an underworld slang for a contract killing. "He has taken supari on behalf of Congress-NCP," Uddhav said.
Senior Congress leader Vilasrao Deshmukh took potshots at the verbal duel between the Thackeray cousins, saying "the duo is so much immersed in their fight that they do not have time for people's problems and Marathi people feel suffocated as a result".
MNS leader Shirish Parkar launched a personal attack on former Union Minister Ram Naik of BJP, saying the latter was medically unfit and needed blood transfusions regularly.
Naik vehemently denied the charge, saying "I have never in my life needed transfusion. I am older than Parkar but much more fit than him".
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