Chant for Thackeray’s arrest

While the Assembly was adjourned for 15 minutes after leader of the Opposition Madhukar Pichad demanded Thackeray’s arrest, Council Chairperson Prof N S Pharande adjourned the proceedings for five minutes and then for 20 minutes after Opposition members almost gheraoed him.

Council members including Vasant Chavan, Ranjit Deshmukh, Chandrakant Raghuvanshi, Anil Patel, Anil Gondane, Ramdas Phutane, Vidya Belose,Rajani Satav, Arun Mehta, Vyankappa Patki among others, shouted: “Atak kara, atak kara, Bal Thackerayla atak kara (immediately arrest Bal Thackeray)” and “Joshi hatao, Maharashtra bachao (remove Joshi, save Maharashtra)”.

Sena members, who otherwise raise cain at the very mention of Thackeray, sat like mute mannequins as the Opposition accused the government of being prejudiced and shielding those who fomented the Mumbai riots.

Reacting to Justice B N Srikrishna’s findings on the riots and subsequent serial bomb blasts as well as the Action Taken Report (ATR) submitted by the state government, Opposition leader Chhagan Bhujbal squarely blamed the government for “not having enough courage to punish those found guilty by Justice Srikrishna”.

“There is no action in the ATR. Accepting the recommendations about improvement in the police infrastructure and rejecting those fixing responsibility for the riots on certain political groups and their leaders, cannot be termed as action. The Sena-BJPgovernment is using the report to consolidate the Hindu votes further. The ministers themselves are using provocative language and are creating tension all over the state. The government has converted the ATR into a No Action Taken Report’ to save Thackeray,” he said.

“As the report has blamed Thackeray and Joshi, the former must be arrested immediately and the latter must resign without any delay. The Union government must dismiss the state government for the role played by one of its constituent parties in the communal riots,” Bhujbal said.

Reading out excerpts from the report, Bhujbal pointed out that the commission had specifically blamed Thackeray, Minister of State for Home Gajanan Kirtikar, Sena MP Madhukar Sarpotdar and former mayor Milind Vaidya, for their role during the riots.

Samajwadi Party member Hussain Dalwai said Deputy Chief Minister Gopinath Munde had disappointed him and the people of Maharashtra by not punishing those who took the law into their own hands. “Maharashtra is knownfor its cultural unity and its leaders like Shivaji have shown that the guilty must be punished. The state government must appoint another committee to suggest action to be taken on the Srikrishna report and implement its suggestions. The SP cannot accept the ATR as it was presented to the House,” Dalwai said. He ripped a copy of the ATR to shreds and said it deserved such treatment. He said his party would “pursue Constitutional means like approaching the courts, taking out morchas and dharnas to ensure that justice is meted out to the victims of the riots and those charged in the report are punished”.

In the Assembly, Opposition leader Madhukar Pichad led the charge, accusing the government of being prejudiced against Muslims. He said the government is making an attempt to extract political mileage by stressing the Hindutva card. On the commission’s indictment of Thackeray, Pichad cast doubts on the Marathi translation of the report and demanded that the original, English version be circulated as well.The Speaker assured that copies would be made available.

The treasury benches jeered as Opposition leaders criticised said the ATR was biased and demanded the arrest of the perpetrators of the riots.Hinting that the Chief Minister must have been under pressure to defer the tabling of the report, Bashir Patel, SP group leader condemned Joshi’s attack on Urdu newspapers as an instrument of fanning communal tensions. “Urdu is not a religion. It is a language, read by Sindhis and Punjabis as well,” he pointed out.

Later, while stepping out of the Vidhan Bhavan compound, SP MLA Nawab Malik, burnt a copy of the ATR in defiance. He was promptly escorted to the Cuffe Parade police station and “questioned”. “It is not a protest by an individual, but by a party. Here is a man who has worked painstakingly for five years (referring to Justice Srikrishna) and we have a chief minister who does not accept the report, but blames the common man who does azaan’ and goes to the mosque,” he said.