BJP corporators on Monday left Shiv Sena leaders to fight a lone battle against the aggressive opposition and walked out of the general body meeting to conduct a parallel meeting outside the BMC hall, making the cracks in the ruling Sena-BJP alliance public.
BJP corporators on Monday left Shiv Sena leaders to fight a lone battle against the aggressive opposition and walked out of the general body meeting to conduct a parallel meeting outside the BMC hall, making the cracks in the ruling Sena-BJP alliance public.
Meanwhile, chaos prevailed in the House, with mayor Snehal Ambekar refusing to revoke the suspension of the six women Congress corporators, and Congress corporators shouting slogans against Ambekar. The ruckus in the BMC House has been going on since the last five general body meetings.
BJP leaders, however, chose their words carefully. BJP group leader in the BMC Manoj Kotak said, "For the last few days, we have been trying to sort out the matter, so that the general body meeting can be carried out peacefully, but the Congress refused to budge. We decided to protest against the negativity spread by the Congress corporators and, hence, we walked out." He refrained from blaming the Sena directly.
Kotak, however, added that only Congress is not responsible for the chaos, taking a slight dig at the Sena's stand of not revoking the suspension of the corporators.
Sena corporator Avkash Jadhav expressed his disappointment at the BJP's decision to walk out of the meeting. "Instead of walking out, the BJP should have stood with us and protested inside the House. I'm sad that things have come down to this level," Jadhav said.
MNS and Samajwadi Party too walked out of the House. Samajwadi Party group leader Rais Shaikh said, "This is not the way elected representatives of people should be behaving. We walked out to protest the Congress and the Sena's stand of not letting the House function."
Group leader of MNS Sandeep Deshpande said about Rs1.4 lakh is spent every general body meeting. "It has been a wastage of public money," he said.
Congress corporators, on the other hand, said they will intensify their protests further in the general body meeting on Tuesday unless the mayor revokes the suspension of their six corporators. "Even after I apologised on our corporators' behalf, the mayor has remained non-committal on revoking their suspension. This is not a school and even teachers behave better with their students," opposition leader in the BMC Devendra Amberkar said.
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