“The legal battles will continue...the party will remain where it is, people of Maharashtra are fully with us,” Raut said. (File)
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Those celebrating now will be rattled, says Uddhav Sena as it pins hope on SC verdict
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A day after the Election Commission of India (ECI) allotted Shiv Sena name and bow and arrow party symbol to Eknath Shinde faction, Shiv Sena (UBT) said it was “fully confident that those celebrating now will be rattled” following the Supreme Court’s awaited verdict on disqualification case against 16 MLAs.
“We will urge the Supreme Court to correct the illegal and incorrect order,” Shiv Sena spokesperson Sanjay Raut told The Indian Express on Saturday. “We are fully confident that those who are celebrating now will soon be rattled…We hope the Apex court will stay the EC order and direct freezing of the symbol till it delivers its judgment in the disqualification case,” he said.
“The legal battles will continue…the party will remain where it is, people of Maharashtra are fully with us,” Raut said.
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Alleging that EC has become a puppet in the hands of the BJP, Raut, speaking at a press conference in Kankavali, said, “The EC has trampled upon all constitutional, democratic and legal norms as well as public sentiment while giving the ruling. We have also read books on Constitution, we have also studied the Constitution…we are also law-makers… EC officials have been made to sit there in the chair and act as puppets. EC thinks that people of this country are fools and only they are knowledgeable. This is not the definition of democracy.”
Raut said that whatever they (the BJP) did was violence in the name of democracy. “This has nothing to do with democracy, it is political violence in the name of democracy. Their vindictive action has a lot to do with the fear they have about Shiv Sena led by Uddhav Thackeray. Only an election will decide whom the Shiv Sena belongs to…Are they ready to hold the elections?” he asked.
Asked about the fate of Shiv Sena Bhavan in Dadar, Raut said, “Nothing will happen…The party is ours. Uddhav Thackeray is our leader and he will remain so…40 MLAs and 10-12 MPs defecting will not affect our party.”
On the other hand, Deepak Kesarkar, spokesperson for Shiv Sena led by Shinde, said, “The people of Maharashtra should understand that the changes in the Shiv Sena Constitution, which were made by Uddhav Thackeray in 2018, were unconstitutional. And this is what the EC said in its judgment. The EC did not just apply the majority test in this case…While giving us the symbol and party, the EC has put forth the condition that we should change the 2018 Constitution of the party.”
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Welcoming the EC order, BJP leader and Union Minister Narayan Rane alleged that Thackeray ran the Shiv Sena as his private property. “For Uddhav Thackeray, Shiv Sena was a private limited company. He should not speak about Hindutva and Marathi manoos. He compromised on Hindutva and became the chief minister. Under Uddhav Thackeray, Hindtuva and Marathi manoos never got justice. Now that Shiv Sena is with Eknath Shinde, they can expect justice,” he said.
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.
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