Corporators of the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) belonging to the Opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the Shiv Sena and the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) disrupted the proceedings of a general body meeting at the PMC headquarters here on Wednesday.
Senior BJP leader Vikas Mathkari told The Hindu: “The disruption was on two grounds. The Shiv Sena and the MNS wanted an ongoing presentation on the Pune Metro to be made in Marathi. The BJP’s stand was that the discussion started at 11 a.m., but a copy of the DPR [Detailed Project Report of the Pune Metro] was not made available to the corporators till 12 p.m. when the BJP intervened and insisted on copies.”
The meeting was organised to discuss the Pune Metro DPR whose preparation was undertaken by the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation in 2007.
The report, which was in English, was being presented by officials of the PMC when some members of the Opposition parties rushed towards Mayor Mohansingh Rajpal who was presiding over the meeting. They tried to stop the presentation and this caused corporators of the ruling Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and the Congress to rush in defence, leading to chaos.
The MNS maintained that its corporators did not disrupt the meeting on the Marathi issue. Not all corporators understood English and it was necessary to have a Marathi translation for them to be able to explain the Metro project to residents in their constituencies, said corporator Kishore Shinde.
The chaos settled after a summarised version of the DPR was given to the corporators in Marathi.
The proposal was eventually unanimously passed in the evening, with just one vote against the project, to be jointly funded by the Central and the State governments and the PMC.
