MNS vandalises Cong office as hawker feud intensifies
MUMBAI: Workers from the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) vandalised the Congress office near Azad Maidan on Friday morning as the row between the two parties over illegal hawkers escalated.
While the Raj Thackeray-led party called it a “surgical strike”, Mumbai Congress chief Sanjay Nirupam said it was a cowardly attack and the party would get a befitting reply if the state government did not act.
Around 10.15am, soon after security personnel opened the office, eight to 10 MNS workers barged in and smashed glass cabins as well as the glass in the reception area with stones and sticks. They also broke the windows of a car that was parked outside the office, which belonged to a party worker.
Police have recovered footage from the CCTVs installed on the premises. No one was hurt in the incident, they said.
MNS general secretary Sandeep Deshpande confirmed that his party workers were responsible for the attack, and said the party was proud of them. “It was a surgical strike by our workers in response to the instigation by the Congress leadership of hawkers. It is a befitting reply to what happened in Vikhroli a few days ago,” Deshpande said.
In a series of tweets, Nirupam condemned the incident called it a cowardly attack. “I can understand the frustration of #MNS whose workers r being beaten up by hawkers regularly…CM # Dev_Fadnavis must act fast or a befitting reply will be given for sure,” his tweet said. State Congress president Ashok Chavan demanded that the loss be recovered from the hooligans.
The Mumbai Congress and the MNS have been at loggerheads for the past few weeks over the issue of illegal hawkers. While MNS workers have been attacking hawkers, the Congress has been supporting their right to livelihood. The MNS has also been pointing fingers at Nirupam for the attack on some of its workers in two separate incidents in Mumbai in the last three weeks — it claims his support to hawkers led to the attack.
The MNS has been forcibly evicting hawkers from railway premises following the Elphinstone Road stampede, which claimed 23 lives, on September 29.