PM Modi apologised before a crowd of over 35,000 people in Palghar for the collapse of the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj statue at Rajkot fort in Sindhudurg district recently.
“Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj is not merely a name or a king for us. For us, he is our ‘aradhya dev’ (revered deity). Today, I bow my head at his feet and apologise to my deity,” Modi said in his first public remarks on the statue collapse. The 35-ft statue of the 17th-century Maratha king had been unveiled by Modi on Navy Day on Dec 4.
He was speaking at an event where he virtually laid the foundation stone of the £7.6 bn Vadhvan port, projected to be the largest deep-water port in the country, in Dahanu.
Modi took the stage with the slogan of ‘Bharat Mata ki jai’ and expressed his deep reverence for the Maratha king. He said the first thing he had done when he was chosen by the BJP as the PM candidate in 2013 was go to Raigad and pray before the samadhi of Shivaji Maharaj.
Modi flayed the opposition, saying there were people who kept abusing and insulting state icon Veer Savarkar but never apologised for hurting the feelings of nationalists with their statements. “Our values are different. For us, nothing is bigger than our deity,” he said.
Chief minister Eknath Shinde and his deputies, Devendra Fadnavis and Ajit Pawar, also paid their respects to the Maratha king but did not dwell on the statue incident. Fadnavis requested the PM for further reclamation near the port for a third airport to serve the city.
Earlier in the day, Congress city unit chief Varsha Gaikwad and other party politicians were detained till Modi had moved on from the Global Fintech Fest in BKC. Later Gaikwad and others protested against Modi at Shivaji Park for the statue collapse.
