Shah-Uddhav meeting goes on for over 2 hours

BJP president Amit Shah on Wednesday held parleys with Shiv Sena president Uddhav Thackeray to patch up ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.

The meeting comes amid growing Opposition unity and in the backdrop of the BJP’s poor performance in the byelections, besides failure to form a government in Karnataka.

The Shah-Uddhav meeting that was earlier scheduled to be for an hour, went on for over two hours. This is being taken as a positive development.

What transpired in the meeting is not yet officially known, however, Shah is learnt to have pressed Uddhav to keep the saffron alliance intact in Maharashtra.

Besides, one of the long-pending issues between the two allies is the expansion of the ministry led by Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis.

Uddhav's son and Yuva Sena President Aditya Thackeray and Fadnavis were present at Matoshree during the meeting. Shah and Uddhav also met one-on-one for over 30 minutes, apparently to iron out differences.

Though state BJP chief Raosaheb Patil-Danve was not present at the meeting, he said: "The position of the BJP is to take along all like-minded parties together (as part of NDA) and we are committed to it."

Shah was given a grand welcome at the Bandra bungalow of the Thackerays. There are reports that Gujarati food like dhokla, khandvi and gathia were prepared for the special guest.

Shah, who was on a day-long tour of Mumbai as part of the ‘Sampark Se Samarthan’ campaign, earlier in the day, met Bollywood actress Madhuri Dixit-Nene at her residence in Juhu and former Tata Group chief and philanthropist Ratan Tata at his Colaba residence.

During the meetings, he apprised them of the works done by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his team, how he transformed India and the plans ahead. Later, he also visited the Siddhivinayak temple.