In an attempt to show that the Shiv Sena was still fighting for the cause of ‘Marathi Manoos’ (son of the soil in Maharashtra), party MLAs in the state Assembly today pitched for curbing migration to Mumbai from other parts of the country and also called for protection of Mumbai’s Marathi identity.
“Marathi families find it difficult to afford homes in Mumbai. Marathi youths don’t get jobs in Mumbai. The government says 80 per cent jobs have to be given to natives but the directive is not being followed. Yet, the Congress-NCP government remains indifferent. If this persists, a day will come when the Marathi manoos will have become extinct in his very own city of Mumbai,” senior Sena MLA Gajanan Kirtikar said in the Assembly.
However, the Sena’s alliance partner Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) took an opposite stand and claimed Mumbai’s woes could be cured if the city got world-class infrastructure.
“Mumbai’s problems do not have lingual, regional, communal, or political solutions but deserve an infrastructure overhaul in sectors like public transport, electricity, pollution control norms, and stricter enforcement of laws pertaining to encroachment,” senior BJP leader and state president of the party, Nitin Gadkari, said in the legislative council.
In a subtle snub to the Sena, Gadkari also asserted: “No political party including the BJP, Sena, or even the MNS owns Mumbai and it is only the ‘sons of the soil’ who owned the city.”
Ever since the Raj Thackeray-led Maharashtra Navanirman Sena (MNS) broke its monopoly on Maharashtrian votes in Mumbai in the recent general elections, the Shiv Sena has been using every opportunity to re-establish its pro-Marathi credentials. Meanwhile, state Assembly Speaker Babasaheb Kupekar directed the state government to carry out a survey of private enterprises in the state to find out what percentage of non-Maharashtrians were employed by private organisations.
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Earlier in the day, replying to question raised by BJP MLAs, Harishchandra Patil and Vishnu Sawra, state Labour Minister Nabab Malik denied that some private companies while recruiting workers in the Shahpur taluka of Thane district had given preference to outsiders and claimed 91 per cent of those recruited were sons of soil.
Objecting to the reply given by Malik, MLA from his own party NCP, Shashikant Shinde said, it seems minister had been misdirected by officials from his department and what he was saying was not correct.
After Shinde’s charge, pandemonium prevailed in the house for while and intervening in the situation Kupekar directed the state government to conduct survey and find out the percentage of Maharashtrians employed in various private organisations.
Gadkari, who is credited with setting up a large number of flyovers and other infrastructure projects, including the Mumbai-Pune expressway, during his stint as PWD minister in the previous BJP-Sena government, added: “Unless there is consensus among all political parties, we can’t prevent people from entering Mumbai. But what we can do is to provide basic infrastructure to the people.”
Referring to MNS without naming it, Kirtikar said the Shiv Sena remained the only true representative voice of Maharashtrians "though there were some new claimants making tall claims".