Pawar power

Sharad Pawar marks birthday by leading anti-govt rally after 32 years

sharad-pawar-rally-twitter NCP president Sharad Pawar speaking at a rally | Sharad Pawar's Twitter account

Former union minister and NCP founder president Sharad Pawar on Tuesday led an anti-government march after 32 long years. Incidentally, Tuesday was also Pawar's 77th birthday.

The NCP and Congress had organised the Hallabol Jan Akrosh Morcha against the Devendra Fadnavis government on Tuesday in Nagpur to protest what they called the state government's overall failure to tackle crucial issues like farmer suicides, loan waiver, deaths of farmers due to pesticide poisoning and the massive damage to the cotton crop caused by bollworm attacks.

The Hallabol Jan Akrosh Morcha was led by Pawar and senior Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad. Pawar was leading a morcha against the government after 32 years. The previous anti-government march that he had led was in 1985. That was a bicycle morcha from Jalgaon to Nagpur. Soon after that morcha, Pawar had returned to the Congress and then became Maharashtra chief minister for the second time.

Interestingly, Pawar led the latest morcha despite a minor surgery that he recently underwent on his toe.

The Jan Akrosh Morcha of the Congress started at Deekshabhoomi and the Hallabol Morcha of the NCP started from Dhanavate National College Ground. The two morchas then converged at Lokmat Square and then proceeded to Zero Mile-T Point, where a huge public rally took place. The Hallabol Jan Akrosh Morcha had received support from all opposition parties in Maharashtra including PWP, CPM, SP and other independent legislators.

Meanwhile, at the rally, senior Congress leader Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil said the BJP and Uddhav Thackeray were the only two beneficiaries of the Fadnavis government.

He also said that all the announcements made by the Fadnavis government and all the assurances given by it had turned out to be hollow and bogus. “The so-called Farm Loan Waiver Scheme named after Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj had totally failed to provide relief to farmers and time had come to teach a strong lesson to the government,” he declared.

This browser settings will not support to add bookmarks programmatically. Please press Ctrl+D or change settings to bookmark this page.

Related Reading