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Glove up, Hazare tells Thackeray!

Social activist Anna Hazare Friday challenged Shiv Sena supremo Balasaheb Thackeray to hold a face-to-face discussion on each other's financial status.

"Mr Thackeray has time and again inquired as to how I can travel by air despite my poor financial status," Hazare said addressing a rally in Pune, organised by the Punekar Nagrik Kruti Samiti to muster support for reinstating Arun Bhatia as the Pune Municipal Corporation commissioner.

''I would like to challenge him to hold a face-to-face discussion with me on this issue,'' he said.

Hazare said state governments often invite him for consultation. He had just arrived in Pune today, by air of course, he said, after such visits to Tamil Nadu, Orissa and Andhra Pradesh.

"Whenever I am invited, I go as a state guest with the respective state government bearing all my expenses including the airfare," Hazare clarified, "It is for this reason that despite being a pauper, I get to travel by air."

He, in his turn, wanted to know as to how Thackeray could live lavishly although he doesn't have any known source of high income.

UNI

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