NEW DELHI: Shiv Sena (UBT) chief Uddhav Thackeray on Saturday backed the opposition’s call for ‘regime change’, saying a government that takes away people’s right to express themselves through voting and protests needs to be changed.“Police are assaulting youth and women, tearing their clothes. Such a regime needs to be buried,” he said, referring to alleged police action against protesters in the national capital.Addressing the Akhil Bharatiya Marathi Patrakar Parishad, Thackeray questioned the deployment of a large number of police personnel in Delhi during protests called by the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) and other parties.“Have thousands of police personnel been deployed in Delhi to ‘play dandia’?” he asked.Taking a swipe at the BJP over media reports of a cockroach effigy being burnt during Dussehra celebrations, Thackeray said that those who claim to have brought Ram are scared of cockroaches.“We are here to change the regime,” he asserted.Thackeray’s remarks came amid a political row over the opposition’s protests against alleged electoral irregularities and the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls.The call intensified after senior advocate Prashant Bhushan called for “regime change”, arguing that spreading “disaffection” against a government was not a crime in a democracy.“This government keeps on saying this is the opposition’s operation of regime change. We are only appealing to save the electoral democracy in this country. If such barbarism continues, there will definitely be a regime change. We all want a regime change. Is there anything wrong with that? Regime change is a democratic right of every citizen, and creating disaffection against the government is not an offence,” Bhushan had said at a press conference on Thursday.Dipke was granted conditional bail on Saturday and asked to sign a peace bond. He had been detained on Friday after stepping out of his home in Delhi’s Jhandewalan area to join the CJP’s “Lehra Do Tiranga” protest at Connaught Place. He was arrested the following morning for allegedly violating a peace bond furnished on October 10, PTI reported.Earlier on Saturday, Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Sanjay Raut also demanded regime change, alleging that authorities were preventing young people from waving the national flag.
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“Can one not protest by waving the tricolour in this country? We wanted to wave the tricolour. Under the Narendra Modi, Amit Shah and Devendra Fadnavis regime, you don’t allow the youth to wave the tricolour; instead, you arrest them or even kidnap them. Which is why there is talk of regime change. And this regime change will happen,” Raut asserted.Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Fadnavis, meanwhile, accused the opposition of seeking to topple the government outside the democratic process. In a post on X, Fadnavis questioned the opposition’s stance on SIR, “Why do they oppose ‘SIR’? Because they want a ‘regime change.’”“It is precisely because they have no chance of coming to power through elections that they talk about a ‘regime change’!” he added.
