ViRA to burn copies of Nagpur Pact today

Nagpur: The newly formed political party, Vidarbha Rajya Aghadi (ViRA) will start its activities on an aggressive note on September 28 to pursue its goal of separate state. At 1pm, its activists will make a bonfire of the copies of Nagpur pact at Samvidhan Square.
The date was chosen by the party as it was on this day, 63 years back, that the Nagpur Agreement (Pact) was signed to pave the way for creation of a Marathi-speaking Maharashtra state, merging with it, the region of Vidarbha.This was done overruling a strong opposition raised by leaders like Bapuji Aney, Brijlal Biyani who spearheaded the separate state movement.
ViRA leader Neeraj Khandewale told TOI that the symbolic protest was organized to highlight how the pact was violated in letter and spirit by rulers of Maharashtra.
“One of the signatories of the pact and then chief minister Yeshwantrao Chavan had stated on the floor of the new legislature that ‘jhukta maap’ (tilted scales) approach will be adopted in favour of Vidarbha and all care will be taken to address the developmental aspirations of its people. But what happened was exactly the opposite, the region was treated as a colony and given step-motherly treatment while its precious resources were exploited,” said Khandewale.
The pact had 11 clauses. Leaving the first four that delineated the composition of the state, ViRA claims all the other were flagrantly violated. For instance, the party says that the clause which stated ‘In the matter of employment in government and all enterprises under its control, it will be done in proportion to population of the region.’ But Vidarbha, which has 23% population of the state barely got 3% of such jobs. Similarly, Clause 6 on fair and proportionate admissions in educational institutions was never followed.
“Clause 4 spoke of balanced and all-round development. But over the years, Vidarbha region was neglected creating a developmental backlog, which in monetary terms has now grown to 250,000 crore. Clause 10 concerning holding the legislative session in Nagpur was done only as a formality with no tangible benefits from it to the region,” said Khandewale.