Congress protest over removal of cartoons

The Congress party had displayed the cartoons in its Ganesh pandal. The caricatures had invited the wrath of local Sainiks who had demanded their removal. The police had seized the cartoons on Monday.

The cartoons had depicted Vajpayee being trampled upon by AIADMK leader Jayalalitha, Thackeray beating a drum of promises, Munde harping on a tuntuna (a single stringed musical instrument used in tamashas),Joshi playing the role of a jester and a woman symbolising the State, dancing to their tunes.

There were also cartoons of the monster of corruption, inflation and extortion trampling the common man and a six-hooded snake symbolising the State Government trying to topple the Srikrishna Commission report.

A delegation led by Mane had met Commissioner of Police Ambalal Verma demanding that the cartoons be returned and action be taken against the officials who removed them. However, Verma refused to comply, pointing out that the caricatures were politically motivated and might create a law and order problem.

In l996 some local Sainiks led by the then city unit chief Vinayak Pande had ransacked the Ganesh pandal of the Congress party, to protest against the display of caricatures of Raj Thackeray over the Ramesh Kini murder.

SHETKARI DEMAND: The Shetkari Sanghatana has demanded a share for displaced farmers in infrastructure projects to be executed by private firms and has started conducting aseries of meetings in the Igatpuri taluka to demand a share in the Mumbai-Nashik expressway project.

In a meeting convened by the Sanghatana’s Nashik unit president, Ramnath Dhikale it was decided to mobilise farmers on the issue, urging them to refuse compensation offered by the government in lieu of land to be acquired for the expressway project. Chandrakant Gurav was appointed to organise farmers on the issue.

The series of meetings have begun and farmers are being told to ask for a share in the profits of the company, which would earn profits by way of toll on the expressway. They are also being told to demand developmental rights along the expressway so that displaced farmers could set up shops and explore their land commercially.

Gurav told The Indian Express that about 2,000 farmers would lose 3,840 acres of land in the expressway project. He pointed out that in the past the government used to acquire land from farmers at a meagre compensation, but times had changed and now the governmentwas acquiring lands for private parties, who would earn huge profits at the cost of the sons of soil.

He further said that the Land Acquisition Act was too old to tackle the problems arising out of the BOT (Build-Operate-Transfer) policy of the government. He said that the Sanghatana would soon launch an agitation on the issue and even hold a public bonfire of a copy of the Act in protest.

Gurav said that the Sanghatana was also exploring the possibility of forming a farmers’ cooperative, which would stake its claim in undertaking the execution of a single or entire stretch of the expressway on BOT basis.

Pointing out that the private companies executing the expressway project would earn huge profits, he said that the Sanghatana would settle for nothing less than 40 per cent of the profits earned by the company by way of toll on vehicles.

Gurav said that the farmer had always been neglected by the government while undertaking huge projects and failed to rehabilitate displaced persons properly. TheSanghatana would also demand a share in government projects, he added.