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In focus
As the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) booked MNS workers over ruckus in Municipal Commissioner Naval Kishore Ram’s office on Wednesday, the MVA partners stood by MNS on Thursday in the form of a protest while taking on the civic administration for mistreating former party corporator Kishore Shinde.
The MVA alliance partners’ protest outside the civic body’s main building was led by city NCP(SP) chief Prashant Jagtap, city Congress chief Arvind Shinde, city Shiv Sena(UBT) chief Sanjay More and MNS leaders Rajendra Wagaskar. They carried placards and raised slogans against the civic administration as well as the former municipal chief for the missing items from the bungalow of the municipal commissioner.
“The former civic chief carried the items of the civic body while leaving the official bungalow. MNS workers raised the issue with the civic administration, but the political workers were wrongly targeted. We want the municipal commissioner to apologise for the treatment to the MNS workers who were raising public issues. The civic administration was hiding the missing items in the municipal chief’s bungalow. They should file a complaint against the former municipal commissioner,” said Jagtap.
Kishore Shinde said the entire civic administration had come together against the MNS workers for no reason. “The municipal chief called the MNS workers goons for raising issues related to public money spent on bungalows and warned the political leaders of the city. We will now bring out the corruption done by these civic administrations,” he said.
Sanjay More said there was a lot of corruption in the civic body and instead of tackling it, the civic administration targeted political parties and booked MNS workers.
Earlier, civic body employees including officers wore black ribbons to protest against the MNS workers’ misbehaviour in the civic office and came together on the lawn of the main civic building to condemn it.
City engineer Prashant Waghmare said the civic administration was working round the clock for the betterment of the city and the political parties should join them instead of creating obstacles. “We will not tolerate misbehaviour of the political workers against civic staff,” he said.
Chief Engineer Annirudha Pawaskar demanded rules and regulations for everyone to behave with civic staff. PMC Employees Union leader Mukta Manohar said that the union has always stood for the rights of civic employees. “We stand together in support of the municipal chief after he was treated badly by political workers,” she said.
