Raj Thackeray, a cartoonist by hobby on Thursday released a cartoon lampooning both PM Narendra Modi and BJP President Amit Shah. Raj Thackeray, a cartoonist by hobby on Thursday released a cartoon lampooning both PM Narendra Modi and BJP President Amit Shah.

Maharashtra Navnirman Sena chief Raj Thackeray, once a great admirer of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has taken potshots at him and BJP president Amit Shah after the BJP’s humiliating defeat in the Delhi assembly elections. Thackeray, a cartoonist by hobby who has seldom put out his works in public domain in the last few years, chose to sketch a cartoon ridiculing Modi and Shah.

The cartoon appeared in a Marathi daily Thursday and has since gone viral on social media.

Depicting the 9/11 attack on World Trade Center in New York, the cartoon shows Modi and Shah as two towering buildings left burning by Arvind Kejriwal’s plane. The panel also has US President Barack Obama watching the incident on television and stating “Twin towers yet again and the plane has survived”. It also refers to suggestions that Modi had used Obama’s India visit for his campaigning in Delhi.

The BJP could win only three seats in the elections as Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party bagged 67 of the total 70 seats. Soon after the elections, the MNS chief had said the BJP’s defeat was Modi’s defeat.

Thackeray has had a blow-hot-blow-cold relationship with Modi and was once perceived to be close to him. He was one of the few political leaders who had visited Gujarat when Modi was at the helm. He has also shared the dais with Modi and gone to Gujarat to support the former chief minister’s Sadbhavana fast. During the Lok Sabha elections, Thackeray had claimed that his party candidates, if elected to Parliament, would support Modi.

However, after the MNS’s poor show in the Lok Sabha elections, Thackeray changed tack and has been more critical of Modi. In the run-up to the assembly elections, he had criticised Modi’s strategies, which many of his partymen felt cost him dear. Thackeray has this time around chosen to hit out directly through a cartoon sketched by him — something he rarely does.

He appears to be inspired by his cousin and Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray who has been critical of Modi and Shah over the last couple of days despite the fact that his party is part of the BJP-led alliance government at the Centre and in the state.

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