'Aurangzeb humare vikas mein roda hai', says Devendra Fadnavis on poster row in Maharashtra

Aurangzeb poster row: Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis said that Aurangzeb is a great obstacle to our development. 

Before the split in the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), Fadnavis spoke to news agency ANI and said, "Aurangzeb is a great obstacle to our development (Humare vikas mein Aurangzeb roda hai). Sometimes, national media especially English media don't listen to our speeches and then out of context they quote and then one narrative is being made out of that. What I said was that suddenly in a few districts of Maharashtra people started to put his (Aurangzeb) photo as their status in their phones and started taking out procession. No Muslim in India is a descendant of Aurangzeb, and nationalist Muslims in the country do not recognize the Mughal emperor as their ruler. Then how come after so many years some people started putting his photo on their status?."

No Muslim in India is descendant of Aurangzeb:

Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis said that no Muslim in India is a descendant of Aurangzeb, and nationalist Muslims in the country do not recognize the Mughal emperor as their ruler. 

"I doubted how come suddenly, in some districts of Maharashtra, sons of Aurangzeb took birth as there is not a single child of Aurangzeb here. Some people designed it to destroy communal harmony. This was my complete statement, but what was wrong with it tell me? Nothing is wrong with this statement," he said.

"But in that statement, they took out "Aurangzeb ki Aulade" and used it rhetorically and I never said it for Muslims. I said that for Indian Muslims, Aurangzeb cannot be the hero. And how come we will tolerate this in Maharashtra as we fought against them? They killed lakhs of Hindus and destroyed thousands of temples," he further added. He further hinted at someone behind all this and added, "If anyone is putting up posters and statues of Aurangzeb then how come we can tolerate it? All of this was designed. If we believe that every year this used to happen then no, after the government changed this incident took place and slogans like "Aurangzeb Zindabad" were being raised. Behind all this, some design is there."

Maharashtra poster row: 

Earlier on, June 8, tension simmered in Maharashtra's Kolhapur after some youth allegedly posted objectionable posts on social media with a reference to Aurangzeb and Tipu Sultan. When asked about that in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections these things (Tipu Sultan, Aurangzeb, Chhatrapati Shivaji, Veer Savarkar) will be highlighted he said that Chhatrapati Maharaj is inseparable as the government we run on their names. If we talk about Savarkar and Keshav Baliram Hedgewar we don't bring their name. 

Fadnavis targets Rahul Gandhi:

Hitting out at Rahul Gandhi, he said "Rahul Gandhiji ek nasamjh vyakti ki tarah aakr aa kr Veer Sarvarkarji ka apmaan krte hai (Rahul Gandhi ji comes mindlessly and insults Veer Savarkar ji). In the jail where Veer Savarkar lived for 11-12 years, I challenge Rahul Gandhi to just stay there for one night."

"The torture Savarkar faced how many people in the country have faced that? In the country, Sarvarkarji got 'Kaala Paani Ki Saza' twice. Sarvarkarji was not only a freedom fighter but also worked to remove the caste system that makes him great. Rahul Gandhi doesn't even know who is Savarkar. Congress always insulted Veer Savarkar and Subash Chandra Bose," he said.

"If they made him understand then how come he spoke about Sarvarkar and again he said something about him? Congress brings out a magazine in which they stated that Savarkarji was homosexual. Uddhavji can tolerate this for power but we will not do this," he said on being asked whether Uddhavji and Sharad Pawar ji would not have made Rahul Gandhi understand about Veer Savarkar.

On being asked about whether are they spreading any information on Veer Savarkar and Hedgewar to remove the disinformation about them, he said that "we don't have to provide new information to people."

"I think as many as books are written on Savarkar, it is not written on anyone. We don't have to provide new information to people on him as people know that, but yes we respond to disinformation. If we talk about Hedgewarji then RSS has a policy that 'Aap Hum par pather faikiye, aap humko gaali dijiye, aap kuch bhi kijiye hum toh Rashtra nirman ke karyo mai lage hai' (You throw stones at us, you abuse us, whatever you want to do as we are engaged in the work of nation building)," he said.

Maharashtra Dy CM on Shiv Sena:

Reacting to the rumours that a few Shiv Sainik believe that if Modiji will do campaigns then they will win and could not win by relying on Shiv Sena he said, "Shiv Sena and BJP will fight together, People of Shiv Sena will fight on the symbol of Shiv Sena and BJP people will fight on the symbol of BJP itself and for both Modiji will conduct the campaign.

He further said that, "If you talk about seats there are possibilities of changes. Even before this in the 2019 elections, we have given 126 seats to Uddhavji and on 6-7 seats he didn't have candidates but we gave our candidates, on their symbol our candidate fought. Even when we made government with Shindeji this happened. When there is alliance give and take happens."Moreover, he further reacted to KCR campaigning in Maharashtra and said that they all are A, B, C teams. They all are, ek hi thali ke chatte batte' (Of one team) and whenever someone tries to make new space people connect it with BJP.

Emphasising on the difference between KCR ji and BJP is that in KCR's state under the leadership of Bandi Sanjay ji, they were doing andolan and I also visited the state but twice public meeting of mine did not get permission and Bandi Sanjay was put into the jail for doing Andolan. In our state, KCR came we said it is a democratic country, whosoever wants to come can come, can take permission and can do as many meetings as they want to do. We are not bothered.

When asked whether Shiv Sena and BJP are going to fight together in Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) elections and Assembly elections, he said we are going to fight with Shiv Sena in both the elections and in Assembly polls we will win 150 seats.

(With ANI inputs)

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