Amid the row triggered by Rahul Gandhi’s comment last week about VD Savarkar, Sanjay Raut – a senior leader in ex Maharashtra chief minister Uddhav Thackeray’s Shiv Sena faction, which is allied with the Congress and Sharad Pawar’s Nationalist Congress Party – seemed to offer Gandhi an olive branch. Raut said he had inquired after his health – the Sena strongman was in a Mumbai jail for over three months in connection with a money laundering case.
Rahul ji called at night even though he was busy with (the yatra)… asked about my health. ‘We were worried about you,’ he said. It is only human to feel sad that a political colleague was framed in a false case and tortured for 110 days in jail,” Raut tweeted in Marathi.
The Rajya Sabha MP also posted a longer English note, writing: “In spite of strong differences of opinion on some issues, inquiring about your political colleague is a sign of humanity… in times of political bitterness such gestures are becoming rare…”