Sena MPs were raising their voice against the mess in Maharashtra Sadan, Saamna says

MUMBAI: Forget expressions of contrition, the Shiv Sena has taken a belligerent stance on the Maharashtra Sadan row, with its mouthpiece Saamna spewing fire on the party’s critics for “lending a communal twist to the entire episode”.
In an editorial on Thursday, Saamna defended the 11 Sena MPs for going on the rampage at the sadan in Delhi on July 17 and force-feeding a Muslim catering supervisor, breaking his Ramzan fast.Stating that the MPs’ intention was to expose the sadan’s corrupt and inept administration, and bring to light the shabby treatment of Marathis by the guesthouse authorities, Saamna said, “If speaking up against such tyranny is a crime, then our ‘mards’ have committed this crime.”
Contending that Maharashtra is often humiliated in Delhi, the editorial said the Sena would no longer suffer such insults, thereby indicating that last week’s incident was to “avenge” Maharashtra’s humiliation in the national capital. This, said a state BJP functionary, could spell bad news for the NDA regime. “Tomorrow, the Sena may make similar charges against the BJP as we are heading the central government headquartered in Delhi.”
“The Shiv Sena MPs have courageously raised their voice against the mess in Maharashtra Sadan. This was not an act of hooliganism. This was an agitation. Actually, the uncooked rotis served at the sadan should have been pushed down the throat of the chief minister, the PWD minister, the chief secretary and Bipin Malik, the sadan’s resident commissioner. Why should there be such uproar if the roti is taken close to the mouth of the canteen contractor and if he is persuaded to eat it,” said the Sena daily.
Maintaining that the Sena respected all religions and that it believed that faith was a private matter, Saamna alleged that news reports that the Sena MPs had pushed a chapatti down the throat of the Muslim catering contractor were deliberately planted from the Maharashtra Sadan and Mantralaya in Mumbai.
The editorial asked chief minister Prithviraj Chavan not to politicise the Sadan issue and, while signing off, cautioned its political foes that Sena would be the next ruler of Maharashtra. The leader comment was titled ‘Gaath Aamchyaashee Aahe (You Are Going To Face Us)’.
Sena president Uddhav Thackeray, meanwhile, sought to downplay the incident by saying that the focus should be on the sadan’s poor catering service. Talking to mediapersons in Nashik, he demanded a probe against the sadan management and resident commissioner Malik. “We had protested against the food. Our MPs ate that food and complained about it. What Shiv Sena did was in protest against a person and not against any community. There are constant blows at the Shiv Sena. No one talks about the rape of a child in Bangalore, corruption in building construction activities or about the Shiv Sena felicitating the Ajmer Dargah Diwan,” Thackeray said.
TIMES VIEW:
This is a new low even by the standards our politicians have set for themselves. It's not really relevant whether the Sena gang knew about the religion of the person they attacked and humiliated. A group of lawmakers breaking the law in such a brazen manner is just plain unacceptable. What compounds the guilt several times over is the attempt at brazening it out and doing what all state politicians do when they find themselves defending the indefensible: appealing to the “hurt pride of the Marathi manoos“. The state has been shamed more by the MPs' behaviour than by the partisanship and the shoddiness of service at Maharashtra Sadan. But no party comes out better from this episode. The muted response from a large section of the BJP and the central government indicates it values its uneasy political alliance with the Sena more than it respects the law of the land. The state government's role, too, will not bear scrutiny; it would be difficult for it to explain why it waited for the media to first focus on the issue before enacting the probe charade.