Pune: Congress leader and former Maharashtra Chief Minister, Prithviraj Chavan on Friday inaugurated the Pune Metro rail project, ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s scheduled visit to the city on Saturday for the same purpose.
A ‘ bhoomi pujan ’ was performed by Mr. Chavan in the city’s Swargate area, replete with the ritualistic breaking of coconut and ploughing of earth with a pickaxe, in presence of other senior State Congress leaders like Harshavardhan Patil.
“This is our symbolic protest against the BJP. In a bid to take advantage of the critical Mumbai and Pune civic polls, the Modi government has promptly approved the Metro projects in these two cities. The work on the Nagpur Metro rail had even begun while the Pune proposal was gathering dust,” Mr. Chavan said, claiming that the sanction for the Pune Metro rail project was withheld when BJP came to power in the Centre in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls.
Mr. Chavan was the Chief Minister of Maharashtra when the proposal for the Pune Metro project was sanctioned.
Earlier in the week, the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) too had taken an issue with the BJP — as the latter had allegedly not invited NCP Chief Sharad Pawar for Mr. Modi’s programme — and had threatened to go ahead with the inauguration.
However, on Wednesday, Pune Mayor and NCP leader Prashant Jagtap announced that Mr. Pawar would share the dais with the PM, who would inaugurate the project as scheduled.
The Congress characterised Mr. Jagtap’s move as NCP’s ‘backing-down’ on the solidarity shown by both parties over the inauguration programme.
“Congress had fully supported NCP’s proposal that the Pune Metro rail project be inaugurated [by] Sharad Pawar, a day ahead of Mr. Modi’s visit, as a counter to BJP for attempting to take all credit for the project. Yet, Mr. Jagtap caved-in the very next day. Hence, there was all the more reason for us to go ahead with our inauguration ceremony,” Pune Congress unit chief, Ramesh Bagwe said.
