Bal says PC comment on migrants true
The Union home minister P. Chidambaram may have retracted his statement blaming migrants for crimes in Delhi, but Sena supremo Bal Thackeray on Tuesday hailed the statement as true. The Sena president criticised the home minister for retracting his statement later and demanded the permit system for Delhi and Mumbai.
In his editorial published in the Sena mouthpiece Saamana, Mr Thackeray justified Mr Chidambaram’s initial statement and said that he has been saying the same thing about influx of migrants for several years. “Mr Chidambaram has said about Delhi, the thing that I have been saying about Mumbai for so many years. At the time of formation of the Sena, I had warned about the threat posed by the influx of migrants to Mumbai. But I was labelled communal and anti-national. When I spoke about implementing the permit system in Mumbai, people from all over the country reacted negatively,” Mr Thackeray said.
The Sena leader argued that an unrestrained influx of migrants had ruined Mumbai. Illegal slums, electricity and water theft caused by migration puts a burden on tax payers, he said. “Those who don’t have legitimate jobs or businesses resort to thefts, murder, robbery and even crimes like rape,” Mr Thackeray said.
He pointed out that Delhi CM Shiela Dikshit had also spoken against migrants. “Ms Dikshit had also spoken the truth and what Mr Chidambaram said is also the truth. But mere talking about it is not going to solve problems. Mr Chidambaram and his government should implement the permit system at least for Delhi and Mumbai,” he said.
Interestingly, Mr Thackeray inadvertently criticised his own policies regarding regularisation of slums. He said that vote bank politics was responsible for the spread of slums. He went on to add that slums till 1995 were regularised and later a promise was made that all slums built before 2000 would be regularised as a part of vote bank politics.
Ironically, it was the Sena-BJP government in Maharashtra that had regularised all illegal slums built before 1995.
Saying that Mr Chidambaram was only true to the Congress tradition of eating their own words, Mr Thackeray appealed to the Union home minister to speak the truth about Mumbai. “It’s alight if you retract your statement later, but please speak the truth about Mumbai at least once,” Mr Thackeray said.
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