MVA ‘threatened’ traders to participate in Maharashtra bandh, says Fadnavis

The former chief minister also alleged the state government misused the police to enforce the shutdown.

Former Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Fadnavis, whose Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has opposed the ongoing day-long statewide shutdown called by the ruling Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) alliance, alleged on Monday that though traders and businessmen were against the bandh, they were being threatened to participate in it. “This is a state-sponsored bandh that has been imposed and implemented with the administration's help. The ruling coalition is misusing the police to impose the shutdown,” Fadnavis told the media.

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Describing the MVA government as an “imposter,” the BJP leader recalled the incident of police firing on protesting farmers in Pune's Maval in August 2011, when the Congress and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) were in power in Maharashtra. The leader of the opposition also spoke about the recent police lathi-charge on farmers at Hanumangarh in Rajasthan, another Congress-ruled state.

“Hence, this government is anti-farmers, and the cultivators have realised this,” Fadnavis added. The former CM also called upon the ruling dispensation to first provide relief to farmers who have suffered financially due to the recent downpour in Marathwada and Vidarbha regions of the western state.

The Shiv Sena, Congress and NCP are the three constituents of the MVA. The alliance called for the bandh to protest against the killing of four farmers in Uttar Pradesh's Lakhimpur Kheri on October 3. Ashish Mishra, the son of Union minister Ajay Mishra, is accused of ramming his SUV into farmers. Four others were killed in the violence that followed--two BJP workers, minister Mishra's driver and a local journalist--taking the toll to eight.

The BJP is in power in Uttar Pradesh.