Raj Thackeray’s MNS, whose politics is based on targeting North Indians while promoting the Marathi case, has fielded an election candidate with roots in Punjab and Uttar Pradesh. What’s more, she is the wife of Raj’s cousin Jitendra Thackeray. Jitendra’s grandfather Damodar was the uncle of Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray.

Shalini Thackeray, who will take on the Congress’s leader in the BMC, Rajhans Singh, in Dindoshi, makes no efforts to conceal her North Indian origins, yet claims to be a true Maharashtrian.

“We (the MNS) are not against North Indians and now people know it. We are only against new migrants in an already saturated city,” she says.

She was born Shalini Bhagat in Bareilly, Uttar Pradesh, to a Punjabi family closely associated with India’s freedom struggle. Her grandfather Bhagat Ram Talwar was an aide of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose.

Five months after the Lok Sabha elections, where she had grabbed more than a lakh votes, Shalini Thackeray is confident she will be more than an “upset factor” for the Shiv Sena-BJP this time. “I am here to win, not to upset any party’s chances,” she says.

Of the 2.5 lakh voters in the newly crafted Dindoshi constituency, the largest chunk is Marathi-speaking locals. Hindi-speaking North Indians and Muslims form the second largest votebank, followed by Gujaratis and others.

Thackeray, who did an MBA in marketing in Massachusetts, represents a party whose sole agenda is to protect the interests of the Marathi-speaking population and keep at bay all migrants, particularly those from UP and Bihar. This might give Singh an upper hand in North Indian-populated pockets.

... contd.