Raj Thackeray slams bullet train project, blame migrants for stampede

A day after the tragic Elphinstone Road foot-over bridge collapse, Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) president Raj Thackeray on Saturday slammed the Centre and threatened that it would not allow a single brick to be laid for bullet train project, the big initiative of prime minister Narendra Modi.

"This Piyush Goyal is good for nothing...just for bullet train," Thackeray told a news conference on the occasion of Dassera. "Suresh Prabhu was changed just for bullet train, he was good," he added.

Slamming the Modi government, Raj said: "We would not allow the (Ahmedabad-Mumbai) bullet train to come up here...till the time the present railway infrastructure (of Mumbai Metropolitan Region) improves."

If Modi wants to run the bullet train, he can run it in Gujarat, said Raj, who was one an admirer of the Gujarat model.

The nephew of late Shiv Sena founder Bal Thackeray also gave an ultimatum to the illegal hawkers in the railway premises. "If they do not move out, we would do in our style," he said, adding that till the time "outsiders" keep on time, such incidents would recur.