Raj Thackeray’s Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) today staged protest to demand better rail infrastructure for Mumbaikars and also to oppose the Bullet train project. The protest comes a week after a stampede at Elphinstone Road station that left 23 people dead.
The city police , however, denied permission to the MNS to hold protest, but the MNS workers led by Raj Thackeray started the march from Metro cinema.
Addressing a rally, Thackeray said that the country was being pushed into crises on all fronts, brought about by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government.
"Modi has been lying and misleading the people of this country. Now I realize that when I visited Gujarat a few years ago at the behest of (industrialist) Ratan Tata when Modi was the CM, I was shown a misleading picture of the development there," Thackeray said.
He reiterated that the people of the country had lost faith in Modi, who ‘only keeps giving speeches daily - how much is he going to speak?’
Thackeray asked the people to speak out against the government. The MNS chief said unless the commuters of Mumbai were given better amenities and facilities, the party's next agitation ‘would not be a peaceful one’.
The MNS chief said that "it seems as if only two or three people are running the country".
"BJP president Amit Shah himself called their own promises 'chunavi jumla' (election rhetoric). Even (Union minister) Nitin Gadkari said the promise of 'achhe din' is like a bone stuck in the throat. It clearly means the government has failed on many fronts," he said.
The MNS leader, who had a good rapport with Modi and backed his prime ministerial bid in 2014, said he was angry because the country has seen very little progress in the last three years.
"I do not see any major changes in the last three years despite the government having a good mandate. We believed in him (Modi) and now we feel we have been betrayed," he said.
After the deadly stampede, there have been sharp reactions from across the public and political spectrum on priority being accorded to the expensive Bullet train project vis-a-vis providing basic amenities to Mumbai's daily eight million plus railway commuters.
