Mumbai: The Congress party leaders have staged protest at Shivaji Park in Mumbai against the recent Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj's statue collapse incident. The statue at Rajkot Fort at Malvan, Sindhugurg in Maharashtra was inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in December 2023 and mere eight months after inauguration it collapsed. The mishap has created uproar across the state.
As PM Modi is in Mumbai today (August 30), the Youth Congress is demanding an apology from the prime minister. Congress MP Varsha Gaikwad also claimed that she along with other Congress leaders were detained by the police for planning protests on Friday morning ahead of PM Modi's visit.
“The police are there at my residence since 7 am. They are not even allowing me to walk two steps. What can I say if asking (PM) to apologise or stage a silent protest is a crime. If questions cannot be asked to the country's prime minister, then whom should we pose our questions to,” she said," Varsha Gaikwad said on Friday morning.
The Congress workers led by MP Varsha Gaikwad later arrived at Shivaji Park, Dadar in a police van and started their demonstrations by displaying placards and tying black ribbons.
"We are representing the entire Maharashtra here. Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj is our identity and pride, there can be no compromise of it. The statue inaugurated by the prime minister himself collapsed in eight months. It is his moral responsibility to apologise to the people of Maharashtra. The reasons like the statue collapse due to the wind pressure are not acceptable," Gaikwad said.
Congress MLA Aslam Shaikh also posted on X saying, "I, along with other senior Congress leaders, have been unjustly detained for demanding justice for the collapse of Chhatrapati Shivaji's statue and for addressing rising rape cases, while those responsible remain unpunished! Narendra Modi Ji, this negligence demands an apology."
Meanwhile, CM Eknath Shinde has formed two technical committees after the mishap. Out of the two, one committee will investigate the cause of the statue collapse and another will work on erecting a new statue at the same spot at the earliest.
