Nationalist Congress Party MLA Nawab Malik on Monday demanded a judicial probe into the WikiLeaks expose carried in The Hindu which indicated that a Shiv Sena MP had advised Dow Chemicals on appointing a public relations agency to handle the agitation against the project near Pune. Raising the issue in the Maharashtra Assembly, Mr. Malik said the Shiv Sena had protested against projects such as Enron in the past and was now protesting against the Jaitapur nuclear power project. Speaker Dilip Walse Patil told the House that Mr. Malik had shown him some papers on the WikiLeaks cables with regard to the U.S. consulate making some statement about a Sena MP. However, he did not give any order in this regard.
The Speaker expunged the remarks made by Jitendra Avhad (NCP) on Jaitapur.
Mr. Malik later told The Hindu that the Sena had earlier protested against the Enron project in the Konkan and later compromised after the company sent a top executive to lobby with the party chief Bal Thackeray. Now WikiLeaks had exposed that a Sena MP had done it again in the case of Dow Chemicals. He said that in Jaitapur too there were protests, there was some mala fide intention which the government must investigate.
