‘You have doubts about EVMs’: Aaditya Thackeray says victorious Shiv Sena UBT leaders won’t take oath

NEW DELHI: Shiv Sena’s UBT chief Aaditya Thackeray on Saturday said his party’s winning MLAs would not take oath to be part of the BJP-led party. Mahayuti Government in Maharashtra. Alleging misuse of EVMs in the Maharashtra assembly elections, Thackeray said he “had doubts”.
Speaking to reporters, Aaditya Thackeray said his party had “decided that our winning MLAs (Shiv Sena UBT) will not take oath” on the first day of the Maharashtra assembly session to protest the misuse of EVM during elections.
“If this was the mandate of the people, people would have been happy and celebrated it, but people did not celebrate this victory anywhere. We have doubts about the EVM,” he added.
Thackeray further said that his party had boycotted the oath-taking ceremony as “democracy is being murdered through the use of EVMs”. “This (Maharashtra Assembly election results) is not the mandate of the public, but the mandate of the EVM and the Election Commission of India,” he added.
Thackeray’s announcement came as the special session of the State Assembly began, in which Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and Deputy Chief Ministers Eknath Shinde and Ajit Pawar took oath as as members of the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly.
Earlier in the day, Fadnavis, Shinde and Pawar paid homage to Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, at the Vidhan Bhavan complex in Mumbai, on the first day of the Special Assembly session.
Aaditya Thackeray and several members of the Shiv Sena UBT party also marked their presence at the event.