‘Salaam Worli’: 2019 poster of Aditya Thackeray given communal twist on social media

A two-year-old image featuring a waving Aditya Thackeray on a poster with the words “Salaam Worli” in Urdu has been making the rounds on the internet since yesterday, with right-wingers and others giving it a communal twist.

The poster is from 2019, before the Maharashtra assembly election, when Shiv Sena’s Thackeray was contesting from Worli constituency in Mumbai, which he later won.

Notably, as part of his campaign, Thackrey had put up large billboards in that part of the city in several languages besides Marathi – Gujarati, Telugu, and Urdu. But social media being social media, Thackeray’s posters in Marathi, Gujarati and Telugu were ignored, with all focus falling on his poster in Urdu.

It is unclear why a photo from 2019 resurfaced now. Interestingly, the election for the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation, the local body governing Greater Mumbai, is slated to take place in February 2022.