By IANS,
Mumbai : Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) chief Raj Thackeray Thursday said the agitation over the “anti-Marathi” remark made by actor-MP Jaya Bachchan was being withdrawn after an apology by Amitabh Bachchan even as he criticised a senior Mumbai police officer, calling him “the Jaya Bachchan of the police department”.
Raj made the announcement Thursday morning while speaking at a press conference. He said the “pro-Marathi and pro-Maharashtrian agitation” of MNS had succeeded and thanked his party activists for their efforts.
Justifying the decision, Raj said that since Amitabh was the head of the Bachchan family, his party had decided to withdraw the anti-Jaya agitation as a gesture of goodwill to him.
The MNS leader then trained his guns on Mumbai’s Joint Police Commissioner (Law & Order) K.L. Prasad, calling him “the Jaya Bachchan of the police department”.
Raj said Prasad must refrain from interfering in political matters. He challenged Prasad to first “shed his uniform” and then come onto the city roads to find out to whom Mumbai really belongs.
Prasad has usually adopted a stern posture vis-à-vis MNS and several times threatened to take serious action against its activists for taking the law into their hands.
Jaya Bachchan’s alleged remarks at a film promotion function last Saturday had snowballed into a major political controversy with MNS taking umbrage at her utterances.
The party felt she had made insulting and “anti-Marathi and anti-Maharashtra” statements and demanded an unconditional apology from her.
Finally, it was left to Amitabh Bachchan to make the apology Wednesday evening at a media conference in Mumbai.
On Wednesday night, Bachchan had said that Raj was “like a brother” to him.
Raj advised Bachchan – “Avoid getting involved into or crossing the boundaries of parochial issues.”
Referring to Saturday’s incident, Raj sarcastically suggested that it would help if “Jaya stuck to the dialogues written beforehand and did not deviate from the script”.