Political parties run hectic campaign in last-ditch effort to woo Maharashtra voters

Mumbai: The hectic political campaign for the Maharashtra assembly polls came to an end on Monday evening with political parties and political leaders repeating their assurances of freebies and continuing their attack on their rivals. The Mahayuti alliance and the Maha Vikas Aghadi spent their last day repeating what they have been saying over the last fortnight.

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi addressed a press conference in Mumbai where he took on PM Narendra Modi's slogan, 'Ek hai to safe hai'. Gandhi brought out all the promises announced by the MVA that included Rs 3,000 to be paid to women and Rs 4,000 to educated unemployed youths and free bus travel for women to farm loan waivers. Gandhi claimed that if the MVA government came to power then they would scrap the Dharavi redevelopment project which he claimed was not in the interest of the people of Mumbai. "They (BJP) have eyes on Maharashtra's wealth, they want to change the nature of Mumbai. Our government will protect people's interest. The Dharavi project is against the interest of the residents of Dharavi. It is against Maharashtra and Mumbai's interest. We will protect Mumbai's interests," Gandhi said. He also attacked the government for taking industries away from Maharashtra to Gujarat and said that 5 lakh jobs could have been created had industries that were meant to come to Maharashtra not gone to Gujarat. The Opposition has been attacking the government on the issue of lack of jobs due to industries going to Gujarat. Sharad Pawar, who heads his own faction of the NCP, also echoed Gandhi when he spoke of industries like Vedanta-Foxconn and others going from Maharashtra to Gujarat.

CM Eknath Shinde addressed a press conference to claim that his government will come back to power. "100%, we will come back to power. We are not worried about how many seats we individually get as parties. We are all working to ensure how many seats the entire Mahayuti gets," he said.