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Restructure panel that will frame state youth policy: Opposition to CM Fadnavis

On May 28, the state government announced a committee comprising of six legislators---three from the Legislative Assembly and three from the Legislative Council---apart from ministers, officials and private individuals.

Devendra Fadnavis, Devendra Fadnavis government, state youth policy, Maharashtra Legislative Assembly, Mumbai news, Maharashtra news, Indian express, current affairs

Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis

The state government’s decision of forming a committee—without women and opposition leaders—that will revise the Maharashtra youth policy has drawn ire from the Opposition, which is demanding that Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis restructure the panel, of which he was a member when he was in the opposition and when the youth policy was framed in 2012.

On May 28, the state government announced a committee comprising of six legislators—three from the Legislative Assembly and three from the Legislative Council—apart from ministers, officials and private individuals. The six legislators, all from ruling parties, include Santosh Danve, Rajesh Pawar and Shrikant Bhartiya from BJP, Ashutosh Kale and Amol Mitkari from NCP and independent MLC Satyajeet Tambe.

NCP’s Dattatray Bharne, who is the state sports and youth welfare minister, is the president of the committee. The committee not only gave a miss to women and opposition legislators, it also does not have any representative from the ruling Shiv Sena led by Deputy Chief Minister Eknath Shinde.

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“Only ruling MLAs have been included in this committee. Not a single woman representative is in this committee. While forming government committees, Maharashtra has a tradition of giving representation to everyone. Unfortunately, this tradition is being broken somewhere in the composition of this committee,” said NCP-SP Lok Sabha MP Supriya Sule.

Sule said that from 2008 to 2011, she created awareness for a state youth policy. “After this, the state youth policy came into existence in 2012…an all-party committee came into existence. I would like to remind the Honorable Chief Minister that when the state youth policy was prepared in 2012, the then youth MLA Shri Devendra Fadnavis was in the committee,” she said.

Mumbai youth Congress chief Akhilesh Yadav slammed the state government for ignoring women and opposition leaders. “It shows the biased mind of the ruling alliance. They are not bothered about real issues faced by youth but are interested in giving posts to those on their side. Tambe recently made objectionable remarks against our leader Rahul Gandhi. He seems to have been awarded for criticising Gandhi,” said Yadav. Minister Bharne was unavailable for comment.

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