Aaditya Thackeray, 24, son of Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray ranks second on the list of 36 star campaigners of the party for the Maharashtra Assembly election.
The scion’s rise in the Sena has been meteoric — a cause of envy for the kin of other political bigwigs in the State.
He first emerged in the public domain as a poet on social issues in three languages —English, Hindi and Marathi. He was 17 then.
But his claim to fame, or notoriety, came three years later, when he lent support to the ranks of Sena activists in burning Rohinton Mistry’s work Such a Long Journey, which forced the University of Mumbai to withdraw the book from its curriculum.
A few weeks later, at the Sena’s Dasara rally, his grandfather and Sena founder, Bal Thackeray, launched him in politics by anointing him as the president of the newly formed Yuva Sena.
Mission 150 Sena’s “Mission 150” for the Assembly election, akin to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “Mission 272” for the Lok Sabha election, was his brainchild.
It became a serious bone of contention between the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Sena, leading to the break-up of a 25-year-old alliance.
Following the split with the Sena, the BJP’s Leader of Opposition in the Assembly Eknath Khadse hinted that Aaditya and his “childish” Mission 150 caused the break-up.
