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Maharashtra minister Meghana Bordikar ‘threatens to slap gram sevak’, Rohit Pawar says her act an insult to state

Meghana Bordikar defended herself, claiming that her anger was due to complaints from women labourers about the gram sevak obstructing access to government funds and benefits.

Meghana BordikarMaharashtra Minister of State Meghana Bordikar has triggered a row after a video showing her allegedly threatening to slap a gram sevak if he fails to bring beneficiaries of a government scheme to a public function surfaced. (Photo: Facebook@MeghnaBordikar)

Maharashtra Minister of State Meghana Bordikar has triggered a row after a video showing her allegedly threatening to slap a gram sevak if he fails to bring beneficiaries of a government scheme to a public function surfaced. Opposition Nationalist Congress Party (SP) MLA Rohit Pawar Saturday shared the video, shot during an event at Jintur in the Parbhani district, on social media and slammed the Devendra Fadnavis government.

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In a post on X, written in Marathi, Pawar said, “A minister has threatened to slap a gram sevak if he failed to bring the beneficiary of a government scheme to the government function. Who has given her the power to threaten the gram sevak?”

Taking a jibe at CM Fadnavis, Pawar added, ”What kind of a minister have you succeeded in picking? With such ministers, it is an affront not just your Cabinet but the state of Maharashtra.”

Reacting to the video of her speech, Bordikar, the two-time BJP MLA from Jintur, said, ”I expressed my anger at a function yesterday. At the function, zilla parishad officials were present. This particular gram sevak was not taking the welfare schemes being implemented by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis to the poor people. He was creating impediments.”

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She said women labourers had informed her that the gram sevak was not giving them government funds and telling them to repeatedly go to the sarpanch’s house. He had not been assisting them in accessing the benefits of the housing scheme, and they were not receiving the instalment payments, she added.

”I lost cool because the women labourers had complained to me about the harassment from the gram sevak,” said Bordikar, who is the Minister of State for Public Health, Water Supply and Sanitation, Energy, Women and Child Development, and Public Works (Public Undertakings). She is also the Guardian Minister of the Parbhani district.

Hitting back at Pawar and the Opposition, she said, ”The video was edited and what I said before making the statement and after has not been shown.”

A gram sevak is a government official who plays a crucial role in implementing rural development programs and schemes, serving as a link between the government and the villagers.
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Manoj More has been working with the Indian Express since 1992. For the first 16 years, he worked on the desk, edited stories, made pages, wrote special stories and handled The Indian Express edition. In 31 years of his career, he has regularly written stories on a range of topics, primarily on civic issues like state of roads, choked drains, garbage problems, inadequate transport facilities and the like. He has also written aggressively on local gondaism. He has primarily written civic stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad, Khadki, Maval and some parts of Pune. He has also covered stories from Kolhapur, Satara, Solapur, Sangli, Ahmednagar and Latur. He has had maximum impact stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad industrial city which he has covered extensively for the last three decades.   Manoj More has written over 20,000 stories. 10,000 of which are byline stories. Most of the stories pertain to civic issues and political ones. The biggest achievement of his career is getting a nearly two kilometre road done on Pune-Mumbai highway in Khadki in 2006. He wrote stories on the state of roads since 1997. In 10 years, nearly 200 two-wheeler riders had died in accidents due to the pathetic state of the road. The local cantonment board could not get the road redone as it lacked funds. The then PMC commissioner Pravin Pardeshi took the initiative, went out of his way and made the Khadki road by spending Rs 23 crore from JNNURM Funds. In the next 10 years after the road was made by the PMC, less than 10 citizens had died, effectively saving more than 100 lives. Manoj More's campaign against tree cutting on Pune-Mumbai highway in 1999 and Pune-Nashik highway in 2004 saved 2000 trees. During Covid, over 50 doctors were  asked to pay Rs 30 lakh each for getting a job with PCMC. The PCMC administration alerted Manoj More who did a story on the subject, asking then corporators how much money they demanded....The story worked as doctors got the job without paying a single paisa. Manoj More has also covered the "Latur drought" situation in 2015 when a "Latur water train" created quite a buzz in Maharashtra. He also covered the Malin tragedy where over 150 villagers had died.     Manoj More is on Facebook with 4.9k followers (Manoj More), on twitter manojmore91982 ... Read More


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