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Mumbai: Taking objection to NCP leader Jayant Patil’s remarks on outgoing deputy speaker of the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly, Narhari Zirval, BJP MLC Gopichand Padalkar condemned the statement on Sunday. He criticised Jayant Patil for humiliating Zirval who comes from a tribal community.
The BJP MLC was referring to the comment made by Jayant Patil during a special session of the Assembly to elect a new speaker after the change of power. While giving farewell to Zirval who looked after the work of the Assembly for the past two and half years, Patil said, he did well despite coming from the tribal community. Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis later asked to delete the remarks from the record.
Zirval belongs to NCP and was the deputy speaker of the Assembly in the last Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government led by Shiv Sena-NCP and Congress. After Eknath Shinde led by rebel MLAs of Shiv Sena became the Chief Minister with the support of the BJP, a new speaker was elected giving farewell to Zirval.
“While congratulating new speaker Rahul Narvekar, Jayant Patil praised Narhari Zirval for his work. But he mentioned his community for no reason. These established leaders have caste biases that do not deter them to speak openly. I condemn the remarks by Patil. I am glad that Devendra Fadnavisji pointed out the objectionable remarks and asked the speaker to delete them. The opposition parties did not even realise till then that Patil had spoken wrong,” Padalkar said.
The BJP leader took the opportunity to blame the Congress-NCP leaders for their attitude towards lower caste people. “They (Congress-NCP) have lost power but their attitude towards poor and downtrodden did not change. They do not have a good opinion about Scheduled Castes (SCs), Scheduled Tribes (STs) and VJNT. They have a superiority complex for being intellectual and they think that they can only run the government. But soon they would realise their mistake,” Padalkar said.
