Sena protests against K’taka CM

More than 100 Shiv Sena workers, including legislators demonstrated against Karnataka Chief Minister, B.S. Yeddyurappa, outside the Taj hotel at Gateway of India, on Thursday.

More than 100 Shiv Sena workers, including legislators demonstrated against Karnataka Chief Minister, B.S. Yeddyurappa, outside the Taj hotel at Gateway of India, on Thursday.

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The Sena was protesting the ‘forcible appointment’ of a Kannada-speaking candidate as mayor of Belgaum and the disqualification of Marathi-speaking candidates contesting the polls. Sainiks burnt an effigy of Yeddyurappa, who was at the hotel to meet to businessmen to invite investment into and to promote tourism in Karnataka. “Yeddyurappa has come all the way to Mumbai to seek business for his state. He should look into the injustice happening to Maharashtrians there,” Shiv Sena Member of Legislative Assembly, Subhash Desai, said.

The protesters shouted slogans against the leader, demanding that Belgaum and other Marathi-speaking areas in the state be merged with Maharashtra. Party legislators later met him and gave him a memorandum of protest. Sena legislator, Ravindra Waikar, who was among the protestors, said, “We met Yeddyurappa and gave him a memorandum seeking his intervention.”

Yeddyurappa, however, did not make any statement on the Karnataka-Maharashtra border dispute. The election of Ningappa Nirwani as mayor of the Belgaum Municipal Corporation had also caused uproar in the Maharashtra state Assembly on Wednesday.