Thackeray said that the central government staged a tamasha in Delhi and said that he has heard that opposition MPs were falsely detained by promising to take them to the ECI.

Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray on Monday launched a scathing attack on the BJP-led central government and the Election Commission of India (ECI) and accused them of weakening democratic principles. Uddhav Thackeray said that today the whole world saw dictatorship when the opposition protested against the ECI. Our government has tarnished our democracy.

Thackeray said that the central government staged a tamasha in Delhi and said that he has heard that opposition MPs were falsely detained by promising to take them to the ECI. He reminded that a BJP leader once gave a presentation to Shiv Sena on how EVMs can be hacked when it was in alliance with the BJP. Later, when asked by reporters, he did not reveal the name, just said that he is still in the BJP.

He warned that the vote theft allegedly committed by the opposition in the last Lok Sabha elections could be repeated in the upcoming Bihar elections. Thackeray’s remarks came on a day when around 300 opposition leaders led by Congress leader Rahul Gandhi were stopped by police during a march to the Election Commission office in New Delhi over the issue of alleged electoral rigging.

Several leaders, including Gandhi, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge and SP chief Akhilesh Yadav, were detained. Thackeray, referring to Union minister Nitin Gadkari’s remarks about alleged deletion of voters’ names in his constituency, said there could be someone in his party who does not want them to win the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. They should control this.

Questioning the conduct of the Election Commission, the former Maharashtra chief minister asked “Is the Election Commission bigger than the Supreme Court? The Election Commissioners are acting as if they are bigger than the President. We want to see what the Supreme Court decides in the matter.” He also alleged that the Election Commission was eliminating VVPAT (Voter-Verified Paper Audit Trail) in local body elections.