(L-R) Union Home Minister Amit Shah, and NCP (SP) Chief Sharad Pawar.
Credit: X/@PawarSpeaks, @AmitShah
Mumbai: Union Home Minister Amit Shah and NCP (SP) chief Sharad Pawar separately visited the famous Lalbaugcha Raja Ganesh pandal in Mumbai on Monday and offered prayers to the deity amid the ongoing Ganpati festival.
Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde, Deputy CM Devendra Fadnavis and Bharatiya Janata Party's national general secretary Vinod Tawde accompanied Shah during his visit to Mumbai's most popular Ganesh pandal in Lalbaug area.
Shah later also visited the Bandra West Ganesh pandal, associated with Mumbai BJP head Ashish Shelar.
Earlier in the morning, Shah visited the official residences of CM Shinde and Fadnavis here and offered prayers before the Ganesh idols installed at their respective homes.
It is the second day of Shah's visit to Mumbai. On Sunday night, he held a meeting with CM Shinde as well as Deputy CMs Fadnavis and Ajit Pawar.
Sharad Pawar visited the Lalbaugcha Raja pandal along with his son-in-law Sadanand Sule and granddaughter Revati.
In a post on X, the former Union minister said, "The glory of Mumbai's Ganesh festival can be seen in Girgaon. I wholeheartedly visited the Lalbaughcha Raja pandal along with my family members. I prayed for strength to fight for the causes of farmers and common people." BJP MLC Pravin Darekar, however, termed Pawar's visit to the Lalbaughcha Raja pandal a "pretentious" act.
"Pawar visited the temple after so many years and that too for political reasons. It is highly pretentious of him to visit the pandal. Pawar had attended events where speakers insulted Hindu deities but never countered them," Darekar claimed.
The Maharashtra assembly elections are due in the next couple of months.