Aaditya Thackeray visits Patna, meets Tejashwi and Nitish

Amid the buzz around ''opposition unity'' against the BJP ahead of the next Lok Sabha polls, Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) leader Aaditya Thackeray on Wednesday flew down to the Bihar capital where he met Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and the latter's deputy Tejashwi Yadav.

Thackeray, whose father Uddhav had snapped ties with the saffron party a few years ago, arrived here in the afternoon, accompanied by party colleagues Priyanka Chaturvedi and Anil Desai, and drove straight to the residence of Yadav, with whom he has been known to be in touch for some time.

Yadav presented the former Maharashtra minister with books based on the life of his father and RJD president Lalu Prasad. The chemistry between the two young leaders, both in their early 30s, was in marked contrast with the acrimony that charactertized relations between Shiv Sena founder Bal Thackeray, who wore his Maratha pride and Hindutva on his sleeves, and Prasad, an earthy Bihari who has always sworn by secularism.

The two young leaders thereafter met Nitish Kumar, who lives right across the street. Kumar, whose JD(U) had risked a split, allegedly engineered by the BJP, like the one suffered by the Sena in Maharashtra, has become a vocal proponent of ''opposition unity'' since he joined the ''Mahagathbandhan'', stripping the saffron party of power in the state.

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