The Mumbai Police on Tuesday arrested eight Maharashtra Navnirman Sena workers for allegedly damaging public property and breaching prohibitory orders, ANI reported.
Videos that have surfaced on social media show nine party workers, armed with shovels and digging equipment, digging up part of the pavement and road shoulder outside Mantralaya, the seat of the Maharashtra government, in South Mumbai, early on Tuesday morning. They were protesting against the problem of potholes in the city, DNA reported.
The party’s general secretary, Sandeep Deshpande, asked what action had been taken against officials who had allowed potholes to come up on roads under their watch. “If our workers have been arrested, what about them?”
On Monday morning, Maharashtra Navnirman Sena workers vandalised an office of the Public Works Department in Navi Mumbai, to protest against deaths caused by potholes. Video clips from the Public Works Department office in Turbhe showed party workers smashing and throwing furniture and equipment. They also shouted slogans against state minister Eknath Shinde, who handles the Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation.
These incidents came two days after a 27-year-old man died in a pothole-related accident in Turbhe on the Sion-Panvel Highway. Five others have died and three have been injured in the Kalyan-Dombivali Municipal Corporation area too in similar incidents in recent weeks.
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