Shiv Sena MPs to complain against Resident Commissioner before Privileges Committee

 Hardening their stand on the New Maharashtra Sadan issue, Shiv Sena MPs on Thursday said they will take it up before the Privileges Committee of Parliament. The MPs are expected to raise the matter before the panel on Friday and lodge a complaint against state Resident Commissioner Bipin Mallick for "ill-treatment" meted out to the parliamentarians.

"We will be approaching the Privileges Committee and take up the issue, most likely on Friday. I have been saying this since July 21 that a complaint has to be lodged against the Resident Commissioner," Arvind Sawant, Shiv Sena MP from South Mumbai, told PTI. Sena MP from Thane Rajan Vichare was caught on a video footage apparently thrusting a roti to a fasting Muslim employee in the New Maharashtra Sadan here. This led to a huge uproar in Parliament amid demands for action against the MPs involved in the incident.

The Sena has defended its MPs and said it was a "protest against mismanagement" at Maharashtra Sadan and held that the entire issue was given a "communal colour only to derive "political mileage" and to "malign" the party's image. "The Resident Commissioner is the main culprit in the whole issue. There have been several irregularities in the Sadan ever since he is in-charge. MPs are being served inferior quality food; we are given bottles whose seals have been opened.

"We registered a complaint, no one paid heed to it. When we asked him to meet us, he did not turn up. This has to be taken up," said Vichare. Anadrao Adsul, another MP present at the site when the roti-thrusting incident occurred, also said the party will approach the Privileges Committee and take up the issue against Mallick.