After a major controversy over sharing of the advertisement space in the media between the ruling Shiv Sena and BJP, Chief Minister Eknath Shinde and Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis flew together in the same helicopter to Mumbai from Palghar and returned to the metropolis later in the evening, signalling rapprochement between the two leaders.
A day after he made amends for having annoyed the ruling ally BJP by sharing space with Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a full-page advertisement and claiming that he was ahead of his deputy Devendra Fadnavis in the chief ministerial race for 2024, Shinde along with Fadnavis hopped from Mumbai to Palghar and returned in the same helicopter. State BJP President Chandrashekhar Bawankule said that the matter needs to be closed.
The helicopter took off from Mumbai, dropped the two leaders at Palghar. After attending a Government function, they returned to Mumbai by the same chopper a few hours later
At Palghar, Shinde and Fadnavis were at a "Shasan Aplya Dari Yojana" event held at CIDCO Maidan on the Palghar-Boisar Road. The two leaders used their sense of humour to put an end to the controversy between the two ruling alliance partners over the advertisements put out by the Shiv Sena on Tueday.
Having ticked off his party’s ally BJP in Maharashtra through the "Rashtramadhe Modi, Maharashtraath Shinde" (Modi for India, Shinde for Maharashtra) advertisement published in many local newspapers on Tuesday, Shinde had on Wednesday sought to make amends by putting other ad that showed him and a grinning Fadnavis waving at people. Unlike Tuesday’s advertisement that had only the photographs of just Modi and Shinde, Wednesday’s ad carried the photographs of other BJP-Sena leaders including Union Home Minister Amit Shah and his late Shiv Sena leaders Balasaheb Thackeray and his own "political guru" Anand Dighe.
Wednesday’s ad carried the symbols of both the Shiv Sena’s ‘Bow-and-Arrow’ and the BJP’s ‘Lotus which was missing in Tuesday’s advertisement.. The latest ad carried punch lines saying "People’s’ choice only for Shiv Sena-BJP alliance", "We bow our heads of the people, Long Live Maharashtra"
In Tuesday’s advertisement, the ruling Shiv Sena had quoted an election survey and said that as per the survey done for the chief minister’s post, 26.1 per cent of people in Maharashtra "desire" Shinde to be the next chief minister of the state, while 23.2 per cent of the people "wish" to see Fadanvis as the next CM.