Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray turns 82

Mumbai, Jan 23: As Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray turns 82 today, the party that he nurtured in the last 40 years still has some control over Mumbai though in fits and starts.

Recent news of the elderly leader becoming ill brought him out to a function to show he was still hale and hearty. His utterances can still move his followers into action, but it is his son Udbhav, who was re-elected as the executive president of the party on Monday, who now holds the power and runs the party. Udbhav announced the same issues that his father had often stirred up - jobs for Maharashtrians, Muslim-bashing, farmers' suicides and so on. The Marathi factor and the anti-Sonia Gandhi tirade once again came up in the senior Thackeray's interview.

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