BOMBAY, 28 August 2006 — For the first time, a regional Marathi newspaper “Lokmat” owned by Congress leader Rajendra Darda, dared to take on Sena chief Bal Thackeray, forcing him to discard his silver throne, on which he remained seated at his residence in Bombay for years.
Thackeray had also for the first time in his long political career, met his match in the newspaper and had to bite the dust for his criticism of the proposed Rs. 220 million golden throne for Sai Baba at Shirdi in Ahmednagar district. Thackeray peeved by a report in the newspaper which questioned the “incongruity” of his opposing the golden throne on one hand and occupying a silver one on the other, packed off his silver coated throne to the newspaper office Saturday evening.
As soon as Thackeray had voiced his opposition to the golden throne proposal for Sai Baba, taking the stand that squandering the huge amount on the golden throne, could be better utilized to help the flood and bomb blasts affected people as well as for the needy people, the newspaper “Lokmat” carried a picture of Thackeray sitting on his silver throne at a Sena convention at Shirdi in 2002. Hit hard by the newspaper’s criticism, the Sena chief clarified that the throne given to him at the convention was a “wooden one but with a silver foil” and that he was not interested to occupy it.
“If my throne is of silver, please take it happily and may it prove beneficial for you. What’s the use of my throne, if the newspaper is obsessed with it? There is no hard feeling nor any pain or problems,” Thackeray said in his signed letter to the newspaper editor Dinkar Raikar. “As said and published about my ‘silver throne’ in your newspaper, I am sending the same to you, which please acknowledge. Hereafter I will occupy an ordinary chair at my residence and office.”
