The Shiv Sena (UBT) on Friday mocked the ‘Cow Hug Day’ initiative for Valentine’s Day on February 14 and took a swipe at Narendra Modi claiming billionaire industrialist Gautam Adani was a ‘holy cow’ for the prime minister.

The Animal Welfare Board of India has issued an advisory urging people to celebrate Valentine’s Day as ‘Cow Hug Day’ to spread “positive energy” and encourage “collective happiness”. This move is getting the backing of some BJP leaders while social media users are generating several memes ridiculing it.

The value of shares of Adani Group firms has taken a beating over the last few weeks after the US-based Hindenburg Research accused it of stock manipulation and fraud. These have been denied by the Adani group.

In an editorial in the party mouthpiece ‘Saamana’, the Uddhav faction of the Shiv Sena said, “Despite protests in parliament against Adani, the PM didn’t utter a single word on the “scam”. People want clarification from the prime minister on the Adani scam, but the Modi government has again given a dose of religion to people to keep them quiet. Modi did not talk about Adani in Parliament, but his government spoke on cows.”
“Adani is the big bull of the stock market, but for Modi, he is a holy cow,” the editorial said, adding the PM had embraced the “big bull” and was not ready to loosen the grip.

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With Assembly polls set to take place in several states this year, and the Lok Sabha elections just over a year away, the NDA government under Modi does not have much to show by way of development, so was seeking votes in the name of issues like Ram Temple and cows, the Sena editorial alleged. Incidentally, Adani had met Uddhav Thackeray, who heads the UBT faction of the Shiv Sena, in September last year.