Cong activists protest ‘dirty’ Nehru statue

TMC officials, local leaders in a tussle over maintenance of the only Nehru statue in city

MUMBAI: Politicians remember nation’s founding fathers rarely. This year, the Thane Municipal Corporation (TMC) authorities invited the ire of local Congress leaders when the only Nehru statue was found unclean on his birth anniversary on Wednesday.

In fact, when the city unit Congress workers, led by former state Youth Congress secretary Sachin Shinde, former city unit president Balkrishna Purnekar and corporator Manoj Shinde, reached Castle Mill Square, where the statue is located, they were shocked to see it dirty with bird droppings and a rotten garland.  Manoj Shinde said, “Last year too the TMC authorities had not cleaned the statue.”

He alleged that deputy engineer, PWD, TMC Sanjay Sahasrabuddhe tired to mislead Congress leaders when called to know why the statue was not washed. “It is the only Nehru statue in the city and the administration cannot even clean it once a year,” Manoj Shinde said.

Denying the Congress charges, Sahasrabuddhe told DNA, “We had deployed a contractor specially to clean the statue.”
TMC public relations officer Sandip Malve said, “It is the responsibility of ward officer concerned to clean statues in respective wards. A letter was sent to the ward officer, Uthalsar Ward Committee about cleaning the statue before November 14 and we even got compliance report.”

The ward officer Ashok Burkule though passed the blame to Sahasrabuddhe, claimed that the statue was cleaned completely on November 12.