Navi Mumbai: Raj Thackeray’s MNS Forces Removal of Gujarati Signboard at BJP MLA’s Office in Seawoods

Tension around the Marathi language row has aggravated in Maharashtra the past few months and now a  Gujarati display board at the office of a Gujarat BJP MLA's office in the Seawoods area of Navi Mumbai on Monday has been removed forcefully. The board was removed under police supervision. MNS gave an ultimatum for the removal of the board last week.A protest march led by MNS Navi Mumbai City Secretary Sachin Kadam, along with leaders from Shiv Sena (UBT), Congress, and the Nationalist Congress Party (SP), reached the NRI Sagari police station demanding the removal of a Gujarati board. The delegation insisted on replacing it with a Marathi one and called for action against those who “insulted" the Marathi identity. Senior police inspector Sunil Kadam assured the delegation that the contentious board would be removed immediately. Following this assurance, MNS leaders and supporters went to the BJP office, where, under police supervision, the Gujarati plaque was taken down.“In the presence of the police, the Gujarati plaque was removed. And the BJP MLA’s worker publicly apologised to all the Marathi people and assured to install the Marathi dais within a few hours," the MNS stated in a release.

This comes after multiple incidents of people linked to Raj Thackeray-led MNS assaulting individuals and vandalising properties allegedly for not speaking Marathi.  On July 5, Shiv Sena (UBT) chief Uddhav Thackeray and MNS head Raj Thackeray shared a stage here for the cause of the Marathi language, and vowed to oppose the “imposition” of Hindi in Maharashtra after the state government rolled back the GRs on the introduction of Hindi as a third language in primary schools. Earlier this week, three Mumbai lawyers wrote a letter to the Maharashtra Director General of Police (DGP), seeking legal action against the MNS over recent attacks on non-Marathi speaking people.The letter, written by advocates Pankaj Mishra, Nityanand Sharma and Ashish Rai, has described such incidents as "serious and unlawful situations that threaten social harmony and the law and order", according to PTI news agency. The letter cited Raj Thackeray's speech at a rally in Worli area of Mumbai on July 5.

It claimed that Thackeray made inflammatory and inciting statements against non-Marathi speaking people, which resulted in the party activists taking an aggressive stance against common citizens, assaulting local shopkeepers, and threatening them.