Maha CM and Governor share father-son relations: Sanjay Raut

Shiv Sena senior leader Sanjay Raut on Saturday met with Maharashtra Governor Bhagat Singh Koshyari at Raj Bhavan here, days after Chief Minister and Sena president Uddhav Thackeray skipped a meeting called by the governor to assess the government's preparedness to tackle the COVID-19 crisis.

Raut later told reporters that the governor and the chief minister share relations like between a father and a son.

A Raj Bhavan statement described the meeting between Raut and the governor as a "courtesy call".

The Sena leadership was apparently angry over leaders of the Opposition BJP visiting the governor earlier this week and complaining that the state government had failed in checking the spread of the coronavirus.

"The governor and the chief minister had no conflict between them. The governor and the chief minister share a father-son relationship between them and it will remain like that," Raut told reporters.

Later, the Raj Bhavan tweeted a photograph of Raut bending with folded hands in front of the governor.

To which Raut tweeted, "well! @bskoshayari is elder to me so this namaskar. Otherwise we had a good interaction, I told him bot to worry,our MVA government under leadership of @officeofUT is running fine".

The relations between the Shiv Sena and the Raj Bhvaan became a talk of political circles after Koshyari sat on two recommendations made by the state cabinet asking him to nominate Thackeray, who heads the Sena, as an MLC from the governor's quota.

Raut, executive editor of the Sena mouthpiece 'Saamana', had then criticised the Raj Bhavan and suggested that it should not become a centre for political conspiracies.

As it was Constitutoinally obliging for Thackeray to become a member of either Houses of the state legislature before May 27, he approached Prime Minister Narendra Modi and flagged the potential political instability in the state.

Recently, the election commission ordered elections to nine vacant sets of the legislative council. With only nine candidates filing their nominations, Thackeray made his debut to the state legislature unopposed.