No anti-North Indian agenda: Shiv Sena

With less than three-days to the Maharashtra civic elections, Shiv Sena Executive President Uddhav Thackeray on Monday said that party does not have ideology that is biased against North Indians.

Claiming that development is their only mantra, Thackeray, ahead of Thursday's municipal elections, attempted to deflect the charge of being hostile towards people from other states towards the opposition, launching a fresh attack on Congress General Secretary Rahul Gandhi.

The right-wing party has in the past flaunted its favouring of increased influence of Maharashtrians in Maharashtra and ideology that Marathis be given preference over migrants from other Indian states, and is also known for its conservative agenda and moral policing.

"How can you say something like the water that is being supplied will only go to houses of Marathis, won´t go to the others? Facilities are for everyone," Thackeray said in an interview to television news network NDTV.

"Rahul Gandhi is himself calling North-Indians beggars. Priyanka Gandhi has also said the same," Thackeray added, referring to the Congress leader's controversial reference to rising unemployment in Uttar Pradesh during a campaign rally last year.

Besides the Congress-Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) combine, the Shiv Sena is locked a fierce scuffle for the civic polls with the Raj Thackeray´s Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) that had emerged from a dissenting fraction within the party.

In the elections that are being seen as a small-scale assembly poll as various important cities, including Mumbai, get ready to elect their respective civic bodies, the Congress-NCP are seen gaining from the tussle between the two right-wing groups.