Miffed by a cartoon mocking Narendra Modi and Amit Shah drawn by Raj Thackeray over the BJP’s humiliating defeat in the Delhi Assembly polls, Mumbai BJP president Ashish Shelar on Friday sarcastically hit back at the MNS chief, by saying that the latter should take up cartooning as his full-time profession.
A day after the cartoon drawn by the MNS chief poking fun at the Prime Minister and Shah over the BJP’s debacle in the Delhi polls —published in a Marathi daily— went viral on the social media, an apparently irked Shelkar tweeted: “Raj Thackerayji has found a way of coming to limelight. His cartoon has grabbed attention. Should do it full time”.
In his cartoon, Raj – a trained cartoonist— has depicted the 9/11 attack on World Trade Center in New York, which shows Modi and Shah as two towering buildings that have been pierced through and left burning by Arvind Kejriwal’s plane. The cartoon also shows US President Barack Obama watching the incident over television and stating “Twin towers yet again and the plane has survived !”. There is also mention in the cartoon about the news that Modi had made use of Obama’s India visit in his campaigning speech in the Delhi polls.
Friday’s was the second occasion when Shelkar took on a political leader who criticised Modi over the BJP’s Assembly poll debacle. Earlier on Tuesday, Shiv Sena President and Raj’s cousin Uddhav Thackeray faced the flak from Shelkar after he had laid the blame of the BJP’s defeat at Modi’s door and said that through their mandate against the BJP, the Delhi voters had established that a ‘tsunami’ was any day mightier than a ‘wave’.
In his retaliation against Uddhav, Shelar had said: “The Delhi elections were not national polls, but were strictly State polls. The question of linking Modi’s name to the poll outcome does not arise at all.