Launching the campaign of the Shiv Sena faction led by CM Shinde for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections at Rajgurunagar in Pune district of Maharashtra at a 'Shiv Sankalp' rally, he also defended his government's record on the investment front, according to the PTI.

"I took the stand with honesty and with the intention of saving the party," said CM Shinde who toppled the Uddhav Thackeray-led coalition Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government of the Shiv Sena, Congress and NCP, and formed an alliance with the BJP to become chief minister.

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Shiv Sena founder Bal Thackeray could have become Maharashtra's chief minister when the party came to power (in alliance with the BJP) for the first time in 1995, but he made another party worker (Manohar Joshi) chief minister instead, CM Shinde said, as per the PTI.

"(Someone said) I have promised that I will make a Shiv Sena worker chief minister but then he himself became CM," Eknath Shinde said while taking a jibe at Uddhav Thackeray.

Uddhav Thackeray, who broke off a decades-old alliance with the BJP in 2019 on the issue of the chief minister's post, had defended his decision by stating that he had promised his late father that a Sena worker would once again get the top post in the state.

CM Shinde, meanwhile, also responded to the criticism his government is facing over big-ticket projects going outside Maharashtra. Of Rs 1.37 lakh crore-worth investment deals signed at Davos last year, 85 per cent of the deals materialised, he claimed, as per the news agency.

"In the preceding two-and-half years, Gujarat had overtaken Karnataka and Maharashtra, but in the last year and a half, we have regained the top rank," the chief minister said.

"Ab Ki Baar 45 Paar" (this time we will win more than 45 out of the 48 Lok Sabha seats in Maharashtra) will be the new slogan for Maharashtra. People have acknowledged the work done by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the results were seen in the assembly elections in four states," Maharashtra CM Eknath Shinde further said.

"Maharashtra is the first state in the country to provide crop insurance at one rupee....The decisions not taken in the last 50-60 years have been taken by the Modi government in the last nine years. The work of the 'double-engine' government is in full swing and this is the reason (NCP leader) Ajit Pawar also joined us," he added.

(with PTI inputs)