Breaking his silence on the Hanuman Chalisa row that has seen a lawmaker couple being booked for sedition and the Bharatiya Janata Party raising the Hindutva pitch, Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray on Monday said reciting the Hanuman Chalisa at his home is not a problem but 'dadgiri' won't be tolerated.
Protesting Karnataka's stand on the boundary dispute with Maharashtra, a group of Shiv Sainiks today vandalised a theatre in Pune and stopped the screening of a Kannada film, police said.
The Mumbai Metro Rail Corporation Ltd started hacking trees from Friday night to make way for a car shed, hours after the Bombay high court dismissed four petitions filed by NGOs and activists challenging the decision to allow felling of trees in the prime green lung of the city.
'The BJP alliance needs to handle the Maratha quota issue skilfully and address its root cause, which is agrarian distress. Then there is stalled industrialisation. If these issues are addressed, caste fault lines would wither away. But, this is next to impossible in a short span of three-four months.'
The Mumbai police have stepped up security near Vidhan Bhavan ahead of the floor test slated for Thursday and along the route that the rebel MLAs of the Shiv Sena are likely to take from the airport, an official said on Wednesday.
'That is why an emotional appeal to the President.' 'There needs to be a strict law. The accused should be punished immediately.' 'All cases should be heard in fast-track courts.' 'In rural areas, women's cases are not even registered. There, political pressure stops them.' 'And if cases are not registered under political pressure, then their voices are completely silenced.'
The Shiv Sena today asked consumers in Mumbai and elsewhere in Maharashtra not to pay electricity bills in protest against steep rise in tariffs.
Congress president Sonia Gandhi has called the meeting on Monday to discuss a strategy on protests over the CAA and the NRC.
Questions are being raised on the future of the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) as differences among its constituents come to the fore and several parties call for serious introspection by the Congress after a string of debilitating electoral losses.
The Shiv Sena on Wednesday said it will oppose Valentine's Day celebrations this year too and protest against any 'obscene or vulgar display of emotions' on February 14.
A protest for Maratha reservation in Jalna district of central Maharashtra turned violent on Friday, leading to dozens of persons including police personnel getting injured, officials said.
Several Rashtriya Janata Dal Members of Parliament, Legislative Assembly and Legislative Council submitted their resignations to party supremo Lalu Prasad Yadav on Tuesday to protest the campaign against north Indians initiated by the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena and the Shiv Sena in Mumbai.
Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar and various other state ministers sat on a dharna in Mumbai on Thursday to protest against the arrest of their cabinet colleague Nawab Malik by the Enforcement Directorate in a money laundering case.
He made the announcement after Maharashtra minister and member of Maratha quota sub-committee Shambhuraj Desai, Shiv Sena MP Sandipan Bhumre met him at his native Antarwali Sarati village in Jalna district and discussed the issue.
Shiv Sena Member of Legislative Assembly Ravindra Waikar, whose police security was withdrawn recently, has alleged that he has been receiving threatening calls.Waikar, who is also the Standing Committee chairman in the municipal corporation, says he lost his security because he protested against Congress leader Rahul Gandhi during the latter's Mumbai visit on February 5.The Sena MLA said he started getting threats soon after the government withdrew his security cover.
The disclosure by Chhagan Bhujbal that he resigned as a minister last November has put a focus on the Maratha quota tightrope the Eknath Shinde-led government is walking amid restlessness in OBCs, with Shiv Sena-Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray claiming Bhujbal and the Bharatiya Janata Party are hand in glove.
The Shiv Sena chief said that for the alliance to stay intact, both the BJP and Shiv Sena need to exercise caution.
Shiv Sena MP Arvind Sawant said, "All airlines have come together banning him (Gaikwad), but it is our fundamental right (to travel by air)."
Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thackeray on Thursday asked party members to show black flags to Rahul Gandhi, during his visit to Mumbai on Friday, to protest the Congress leader's 'Mumbai for all' comment. Thackeray has asked Sena workers to show black flags to Rahul during his visit to the city, said senior party leader Sanjay Raut. The directive from Thackeray has come at a time when there has been a war of words between the Sena and the Congress over the migrant issue.
Citing the incident of Shiv Sena activists storming the BCCI headquarters in Mumbai protesting against the resumption of bilateral cricket series between the arch-rivals, the ICC President Zaheer Abbas said he feared for Pakistan players' security during the World T20 in India next year.
Sena spokesperson Neelam Gorhe said despite demands by the party, the Colors channel did not remove the two Pakistani participants -- Veena Malik and Begum Nawazish Ali -- from the show.
Speaking at an event over the weekend, Koshyari had said Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj was an icon of the 'olden days'.
The Mumbai police have registered an FIR against 107 persons for rioting and conspiracy, following the protest outside Nationalist Congress Party president Sharad Pawar's residence, Silver Oak in south Mumbai, on Friday, an official said.
Opposition leaders nominated to the panel of chairpersons to assist the pro tem Speaker are considering not accepting the positions, a source said on Saturday.
The crackdown came after the Shiv Sena stepped up its protest against the film over the actor's remarks.
Barring stray incidents of violence like stone pelting, the shutdown called by the MVA allies Shiv Sena, the Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party was largely peaceful.
Thackeray was included in the list of villains along with Mahatma Gandhi's assassin Nathuram Godse.
Shinde also took a swipe at the Nationalist Congress Party-Sharadchandra Pawar chief Sharad Pawar and Uddhav Thackeray of the Shiv Sena-Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray while responding to Jarange.
Police insisted that there was no clash with the protesters and that the cops at the site were facilitating the protesters and ensuring a peaceful gathering.
Normal life was hit on Monday in several parts of Maharashtra, particularly Mumbai where stone-pelting BJP and Shiv Sena activists tried to disrupt road and rail traffic during the 12-hour bandh called by the opposition to protest price rise.
Violence erupted in the central Maharashtra city of Parbhani after a replica of the Constitution was vandalized. Around 50 people have been detained for the protests, while a man with mental health issues has been arrested for allegedly damaging the replica. Opposition leaders condemned the incident, calling for strict action against those responsible. The situation is under control, but tensions remain high in the city.
Barely days after imposing a 40 per cent export tax on onions to cool down soaring prices, which, in turn, triggered widespread protests across the main growing belts, the Centre on Tuesday sought to mitigate both political and economic tensions gripping parts of Maharashtra. It decided to procure an additional 200,000 tonnes of onions at Rs 2,410 per quintal for its buffer stock from farmers, a rate that is strikingly close to the price at which they were being exported before the 40 per cent duty was levied on August 19. The export price before the imposition of the duty stood at around $320 per tonne free on board (approximately Rs 2,650 per quintal).
'The Maratha versus OBC friction will increase. A huge chunk of the Shiv Sena's social base consists of OBCs.' Dhaval Kulkarni reports.
Mounting pressure on its ally over the border row issue, the Shiv Sena today warned BJP that it would snap ties with it if its government in Karnataka continued to "torture" Marathi-speaking people.
Introducing the bill, Rijiju said the consultation process of the Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) was the largest ever exercise carried out by a parliamentary panel in India's democratic history.
The Shiv Sena and MNS on Monday threatened to stall the run of the hit reality TV show Bigg Boss, protesting the inclusion of Pakistani artistes in the fourth season hosted by superstar Salman Khan.
Sanjay Raut, a key leader of the Uddhav Thackeray faction of the Shiv Sena, on Monday claimed that Maharashtra Governor Bhagat Singh Koshyari has expressed the desire to quit after the Shiv Sena (UBT) gave a call for a statewide bandh to protest his "insult" to Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, a claim refuted by the Raj Bhavan.
In an editorial in its mouthpiece 'Saamana', the erstwhile ally of the Bharatiya Janata Party questioned if financial transactions of film personalities who openly support the government at the Centre were clean and transparent.
The farmers of the state have been demanding a complete waiver of loans and electricity bills.
