Top leaders of all parties skip customary press conference

Nagpur: The absence of top leaders from the customary press briefings marked the end of monsoon session of assembly held here after a gap over five decades. The briefings are a usual practice after end of the session from both sides where they highlight their respective achievements and opponent’s failures. This time, however, everyone seemed to be in a hurry to board flights to Mumbai, so the press meeting, which are usually conducted at Congress and BJP offices on the Vidhan Bhavan premises, were cancelled.
The biggest surprise was Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis who rushed to Ramgiri first and then to Mumbai immediately after the proceedings of the council were wrapped up. None of the senior ministers were deputed to speak to the media. City president Sudhakar Kohale was kept waiting for the CM, as he wasn’t aware of the cancellation. After being informed by the media persons, he left the venue.

Even from Opposition benches, top leaders like former CM Prithviraj Chavan, ex-deputy CM Ajit Pawar and former minister Jayant Patil didn’t face the media. However, leader of opposition (LOP) in assembly and council Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil and Dhananjay Munde, did come and speak a few words.

They too spoke separately at the media gallery, which was quite unusual, as there used to be combined press meetings of BJP-Sena and Congress-NCP leaders, till last year. Former minister Vijay Wadettiwar flanked by Congress MLAs — Virendra Jagtap and Sunil Kedar — talked to the media separately, which was another surprise.

The Opposition leaders slammed the government for failure on all fronts and also for meting out injustice to the Vidarbha’s citizens, particularly the farmers. They accused Fadnavis and team of not filing replies to their last-week resolution that highlighted the plight of farmers along with other issues.

“Once again the government has miserably failed to address all issues of Vidarbha and Maharashtra citizens and only involved in ‘jumlebazi’. Right from topics like Shivaji Maharaj’s memorial in Arabian Sea to Maratha and Dhangar reservations, to CIDCO Land Scam, the BJP-Sena ministers didn’t replied satisfactorily to any of the issues. They in fact, escaped from answering on all these topics,” he said.

Echoing the same sentiments, Munde said the government didn’t replied to many of the issues like scams in IT, digital India and Mumbai development plan. “One more scam emerged, when it’s came to fore that over 500 Wi-Fi spots set up in Mumbai isn’t functioning, still over Rs200 crore was granted to the company. The CM however granted clean chit to all such scams.”

He added that the government didn’t announce a Rs21,000 crore package in council, which too, seemed to be a total eyewash.

Wadettiwar accused the government of not making efforts to remove Vidarbha’s backlog from the sectors like irrigation, education, and health. “It also failed to generate any substantial employment in the region. The people from the region would teach a befitting lesson to saffron alliance,” he said.

Jagtap said even the Rs13,500 crore package announced by union minister Nitin Gadkari was just an eyewash. “The CM had declared Rs500 crore for Chikhaldara development, two years back but nothing progressed since then,” he said.