Pune MNS chief shunted out by Raj Thackeray 

He objected to party chief’s ‘remove loudspeakers from mosques’ comment

Taking a hard line towards fractious voices within his party, Maharashtra Navnirman Sena chief Raj Thackeray on Thursday ‘removed’ Pune city president Vasant More from his post following the latter’s objections to Mr. Thackeray’s recent speech demanding the removal of loudspeakers from mosques and countering the Azaan with Hanuman Chalisa.

Mr. More, a long–time associate of Mr. Thackeray, was considered one of the important faces of the MNS in Pune district since the inception of the party in 2006.

Following a meeting of MNS leaders from Pune at his residence in Mumbai on Thursday, Mr. Thackeray announced that Mr. More would no longer continue as the Pune city chief of the MNS while appointing MNS corporator Sainath Babar in his stead.  

“I am not upset with Mr. Thackeray nor have I been ‘removed’ as is being said…I had myself expressed the wish that I would not continue in this post after May,” said Mr. More, who was neither invited to Mumbai for the meeting nor was kept in the loop regarding his ‘dismissal’.

In his April 2 speech on the occasion of ‘Gudi Padwa’ (the Marathi New Year), Mr. Thackeray, advocating a hard ‘Hindutva’ line, demanded the ruling tripartite Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government to remove loudspeakers from mosques; else his party workers would do so by force and play the Hanuman Chalisa in their stead.

However, his speech has met with distinctly mixed reactions by his partymen like Mr. More, who refused to implement it for fear of alienating their Muslim voters.

The MNS has only two corporators — Mr. More and Mr. Babar — in the cash–rich Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) which is dominated by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and which goes to the polls later this year.