Athawale raises pitch on demand for Indu Mills land
HT Correspondent, Hindustan Times
Mumbai, January 07, 2012
On Friday, a day after he finalising a seat-sharing deal with the Shiv
Sena-BJP alliance for the Mumbai civic polls, Republican Party of
India (RPI) chief Ramdas Athawale upped the ante over the issue of
building a memorial for Dr B R Ambedkar at Indu mills in Dadar. In a
bid to score
over the state Congress, which quickly got the Centre to approve the
demand to hand over the entire 12.5 acres of land at Indu mills for
the memorial, Athawale threatened that he would start an agitation if
the land was not handed over by the Centre by January 26.
Athawale, who was an ally of the Congress-NCP for about two decades,
is now using the Indu mills card to score over his former partners, as
he has joined hands with the saffron combine.
Athawale hopes that the issue will help him connect with the dalit
voters, who are reported to be in a dilemma after he joined hands
with the saffron alliance in November 2011. Traditionally, the dalit
voters do not support right-wing parties. Hence Athawale needs an
emotional issue to woo his support base.
In a gathering of RPI followers at the Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar ground at
Worli on Friday evening, Athawale asked the Congress at the Centre, to
officially hand over the land for the memorial on or before January
26. Else, the RPI will gherao Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and
protest on the streets, he announced. "The Congress party has made
several false promises to us on several occasions. We want them to
come clean on what they have promised," Athawale said. The
constitution, framed by Dr Ambedkar, came into effect on January 26,
so the mill land should be officially handed over on the same day, he
demanded.
The Indu mills land has been at the centre of a controversy as various
Dalit outfits opposed the Centre's decision to hand over only four
acres of the mill's land for the memorial, asking for the entire 12.5
acres instead.
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