‘It’s B for Balasaheb, not Bangladesh’

They would have also heard former prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, in a baffling oversight of the Gujarat carnage, say that under his rule the country did not witness any riots.

In the end, just three days before polling day for the crucial Assembly elections, the crushing weight of resurrecting the Sena-BJP flag in Maharashtra fell on the shoulders of the frail Tiger and the defeated poet-politician.

The charisma on stage was, however, on a drip. Bal Thackeray gingerly got up to the dais and railed against the Bangladeshi Muslims and Vajpayee, unable to get up, rooted for a change from his seat.

Ambulances, doctors and lifts stood in attendance.

Vajpayee pointed to Maharashtra’s debt burden of more than Rs 1 lakh crore, the large number of deaths due to malnutrition and suicides by farmers.

In shades, his speech picked on the same development issues that his opponent in the Congress, Sonia Gandhi, had picked on in an even bigger rally at the same spot just before the Lok Sabha victory.

The rally comes a day before Sonia’s roadshow which will hit the metropolis on Monday.

Speaking before Vajpayee, Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thackeray clarified that the Sena was never against nationalist Muslims, who respected the Tricolour. In the same breath, he observed that there was an urgent need to immediately deport Muslims from Bangladesh.

‘‘I want B (in Bombay) for Balasaheb, under no circumstances, will I tolerate B for Bangladesh,’’ warned the man who spearheaded the change in the name of the city from Bombay to Mumbai in the nineties.

Surprisingly, besides Thackeray’s nephew Raj, BJP General Secretary Pramod Mahajan and State BJP President Gopinath Munde did not attend the rally.

In his usual style, Thackeray took personal potshots at Congress president Sonia Gandhi and NCP president Sharad Pawar. ‘‘Ek pardesi aurat ne Congress ke saare netaon ko kaisa hijra bana diya,’’ Thackeray said and recalled film star Nana Patekar’s famous dialogue, “Ek machhar aadmi ko hijra bana deta hai.

Thackeray said NCP chief Sharad Pawar, who was prompted to form a new party over Sonia Gandhi’s foreign origin issue, has now completely surrendered before her. ‘‘Marathas like Sharad Pawar are a blot on the entire Maratha community,’’ Thackeray said.