HOUR OF PROTEST

He was addressing a public meeting after leading a morcha to the Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority (MHADA) office at Bandra.

The party also held a morcha at the office of Reliance Infrastructure,which supplies power to the suburbs. Uddhav warned Reliance and BEST,which caters to the island city,that the deadline for rollback is almost over. Uddhav asked citizens not to pay the hiked bills and dared the authorities to snap connections.

Uddhav said if the Shiv Sena-BJP alliance came to power,he would flush out errant builders whom he likened to “mice” that had “eaten into the stronghold of Maharashtrians.”

Uddhav handed over a memorandum to the government on the problems of people living in old and dilapidated buildings,MHADA colonies,languishing SRA projects,gaothans and koliwadas,transit camps,slums in Dharavi and the vicinity of the airport,and workers in defunct textile mills.

The memorandum alleged that townships coming up far from Mumbai could be a ploy to “lure away original residents with the dream of cheap housing,erect skyscrapers on the vacated plots and create a Shanghai for the rich”.

Uddhav attacked the state government for the names chosen for the sea link and the Mumbai-Pune Expressway. He said work on the sea link had been launched by his father,Sena chief Bal Thackeray,and attacked NCP president Sharad Pawar for suggesting that it be named after Rajiv Gandhi. Uddhav suggested the names of Vinay Damodar Savarkar,Vasudeo Balwant Phadke and C D Deshmukh.

He said the Mumbai-Pune Expressway,too,had been conceptualised by his father.Instead of giving Y B Chavan to the expressway,he suggested that the Pune-Kolhapur highway be named Chavan.