When Bal Thackeray Was Disenfranchised for Far Less Than Modi's Polarising Politics
In December 1987, while campaigning for Shiv Sena candidate Ramesh Prabhu, Thackeray had made several hate speeches for which he was later benched for six years by the judiciary and the EC.
Shiv Sena founder Bal Thackeray. Credit: PTI
Mumbai: With all else, including the air strikes against Pakistan, failing, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has decided to communalise the ongoing elections in the country.
On April 1, in Wardha, he slammed Congress president Rahul Gandhi for filing his nomination papers from Wayanad in Kerala, which he described as a Hindu minority constituency.
Elsewhere, he berated the Congress for describing a section of terrorists in India as ‘saffron terrorists’.
So far, the Election Commission’s response has been wanting. This is especially clear to see from how the Shiv Sena, an ally of the BJP in the present election, paid the price for less than this in the 1980s and 1990s when the EC barred Bal Thackeray and his candidate Dr Ramesh Prabhoo from contesting polls for six years. The two were also disenfranchised for the same amount of time.
Campaigning for Prabhoo, who had been his physician since the early 1970s, Thackeray had called Muslims names and appealed to Hindus to vote for a fellow Hindu at a by-election for the Maharashtra assembly in December 1987.
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