Sena to resist making Mumbai a UT: Thackeray

New Delhi, Feb 17: The Shiv Sena today said attempts of the Congress to take away Mumbai from Maharashtra by according Union Territory status to the megapolis would be stoutly resisted.

Shiv Sena Working President, Uddhav Thackeray, told newspersons here that many Congress leaders, including Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, had been making this effort for many years but the Shiv Sena would not only foil it but oppose it by tooth and nail.

He said former Maharashtra Chief Minister, Vasant Dada Patil, had opposed this measure while being in Congress but the present Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh and Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar were maintaining 'studied silence' on the issue.

He regretted that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh during the last election campaign for Mumbai City Corporation was promising that his party would give all necessary fiscal support to carry out developmental work in the financial capital. But after Shiv Sena had come to power, the Centre had not given anything to Mumbai.

Mr Thackeray said the deficit of Mumbai stood at Rs 40,000 crore when BJP-Shiv Sena was in power four years ago but it had reached Rs 1.5 lakh crore in the four years of Congress-NCP regime. Where this money had been siphoned off as Mumbai never saw any development all these years, he wondered.

UNI