AICC general secretary in charge of Maharashtra Ramesh Chennithala condemned the move of the Modi government to have non-Muslims on wakf boards. "Can Muslims be on the board of Guruvayur temple?" he asked referring to the famed Krishna temple in Kerala. He stated categorically that the Congress was vehemently opposed to the bill and will oppose it tooth and nail. He was taking part in a panel discussion organised by the New Indian Express on Friday.
Coming down heavily on the ruling Maha Yuti coalition, he said the people of Maharashtra will teach the ruling Maha Yuti coalition a lesson all over again in the upcoming assembly elections.
He said the pulling down of the MVA government led by Uddhav Thackeray by the BJP was resented by the voters and that was one of the principal reasons why the saffron party performed poorly in the Lok Sabha elections winning only nine seats against the 23 it bagged in 2019.
Chennithala said the BJP had accused Ajit Pawar of being involved in a Rs 70,000 cr irrigation scam and later joined hands with him. This did not go unnoticed in the parliamentary polls and will be remembered by voters in the assembly elections as well. The Eknath Shinde government has failed on all fronts, including law and order. He said distress was widespread in rural areas with the number of suicides by farmers increasing to 20,000. Unemployment was on the rise and the government was concerned only about the corporate world and not bothered about the poor and marginalised sections. Corruption has become the norm and there are allegations of underhand dealings in the erection of the Chhatrapati Shivaji statue at Malvan which collapsed recently.
Criticising the BJP's 'One Nation, One Election' policy, Chennithala said the party could not hold assembly elections in Maharashtra along with Haryana, Jammu & Kashmir and Jharkhand.
Milind Deora, Shiv Sena (Shinde) MP, said that when police officer Sachin Vaze was arrested for his alleged role in planting explosives near Mukesh Ambani's residence, Uddhav Thackeray had asked if he was Osama Bin Laden. Such a remark had upset the business community. He described the MVA as an unprincipled political alliance. He pointed out that Sharad Pawar had broken away from the Congress over the issue of Sonia Gandhi's citizenship, but later joined hands with her.
The Shiv Sena (UBT) had previously talked about Hindutva and its leaders had bitterly criticized the Congress, yet now both parties were together. "The 2019 mandate was for the NDA alliance, and it was Uddhav Thackeray who went against the will of the people by parting ways with the BJP," said Deora. He also said that the Shinde government was implementing a massive development agenda, as reflected in the commissioning of Atal Setu, the coastal road, Vadhavan port, Navi Mumbai airport, etc. Referring to the Dharavi redevelopment project, he said it should not be politicized. He noted that thousands of people would be receiving free homes, and no one should take away their right to housing.
