Nitin Gadkari meets Uddhav Thackeray

Union Minister Nitin Gadkari on Tuesday met Shiv Sena president Uddhav Thackeray at his residence in suburban Bandra here.

Gadkari met Thackeray to extend his daughter's wedding invitation, the Sena chief's media advisor Harshal Pradhan said.

The meeting assumes significance after a series of telephonic talks between top BJP leaders and Thackeray over the Sena's stand on demonetisation.

Earlier, Union Ministers Arun Jaitley, Venkaiah Naidu and Rajnath Singh had called up Thackeray to allay his apprehensions over demonetisation.

Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh had last week spoken to Thackeray and is believed to have conveyed BJP's unhappiness over Sena participating in a march against demonetisation.

However, the NDA ally had stuck to its criticism, saying the demonetisation decision could have been implemented in a better way.

The Shiv Sena, the oldest ally of BJP and part of the governments at the Centre and in Maharashtra, had last week joined a march to Rashtrapati Bhavan led by Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee and participated by AAP and National Conference against the Centre's demonetisation move.