Shiv Sena was among the first to back Anna Hazare: Uddhav Thackeray
Mumbai: Shiv Sena has blasted Team Anna member and noted lawyer Prashant Bhushan for favouring removal of Army from Jammu and Kashmir. In an editorial in party’s mouthpiece- ‘Saamna’, Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray said the Team Anna members have lost their minds.
Saamna’s editorial stated that Team Anna member Prashant Bhubshan has supported suggestions to remove military from Jammu and Kashmir and also abolish the Armed Forces Special Protection Act (AFSPA) from the North-East.
It may be noted that civil rights activist Irom Chanu Sharmila, who has been on hunger strike since 2002 demanding the government to repeal the AFSPA, had recently invited Team Anna to Manipur.
Hurriyat Conference leader Mirwaiz Umar Farooq had also urged the Team Anna to demand the government to withdraw forces from Jammu and Kashmir.
The Shiv Sena had also criticised Anna Hazare’s plan to visit Pakistan to support the anti-corruption movement there.
"Be it Anna or anyone else, they should first speak to kin of those killed in the Mumbai and Delhi blasts, before anointing themselves Nishan-e-Pakistan (Pakistan's highest civilian award)," Bal Thackeray wrote in Saamna.
"Whether Anna goes to Pakistan or not is another matter, but it would have been better had he given a thought to the country's sentiments on the issue," the editorial added.
"The Congress party has lost its right to take the name of Mahatma Gandhi and must instead take the name of (Italian fascist leader Benito) Mussolini for the manner in which it has behaved," said Sena working president Uddhav Thackeray at a hurriedly called press conference in Mumbai .
Thackeray blasted the Congress party for invariably stifling democratic protests, and pointed out that the party either opened fire on protestors or put them behind bars. "Be it Jaitapur, Maval, or Hazare, this party does not believe in democracy, as propounded by Gandhi," said Thackeray. He said the Congress should have held talks with Team Anna, not arrested him.
The Sena leader took pains to point out that his party was among the first to back Anna Hazare, pointing to an article it had published on April 6, 2011, in its paper, Saamna. But Thackeray refused to openly back Hazare's demand that the prime minister and higher judiciary be included in the Lokpal Bill. "This must be discussed and decided," he said.When asked whether his party would support the agitation started by Hazare, Uddhav sidestepped the question by merely saying that the Shiv Sena chief (Bal Thackeray) would take the final call.
Incidentally, the Sena has had a testy relation with Anna Hazare, who had targeted the Sena-BJP government when it was in power the mid-1990s. Hazare had alleged that a Sena minister was corrupt; he was later found innocent and went on to file a defamation case against Hazare (the matter was resolved by then chief minister Manohar Joshi). Bal Thackeray had called him a Gandhian with a crooked face. And just a few days ago, a Sena legislator, Sureshdada Jain, who was earlier in the NCP, called Hazare a "Taliban Gandhi".
While the Sena has wholeheartedly embraced anti-government causes, be it the Jaitapur agitation against a nuclear plant, or houses for mill workers in Mumbai, or of late the agitation by farmers in Maval against a water pipeline, it has been reluctant to take up Hazare's cause with the same gusto. Paradoxically, its ally, the BJP has been in the forefront in backing Hazare.
But given massive support for Hazare, particularly in urban centres, it seems the Sena top brass was forced to do a rethink, particularly after TV channels kept playing out Hazare's arrest in New Delhi. "If necessary, we are ready for an agitation to support Anna Hazare," said Uddhav Thackeray.
No comments:
Post a Comment