MUMBAI: Shiv Sena protested the government's moves over Nanaran greenfield refinery project in Konkan ahead of the state cabinet meeting here on Wednesday.
While Petroleum minister Dharmendra Pradhan penned six MOUs with Saudi Aramco and other companies at Delhi two days back without giving a hint to the Shiv Sena, state industries minister Subhash Desai, who is a Shiv Sena leader and is said to have initiated process to cancel land acquisition process for Nanar project, was kept away from Prime Minister Narendra Modi's roundtable meeting with industrialists on Tuesday.
All these things reflected in Sena ministers' meeting with Chief Minister ahead of the cabinet meeting. Transport minister Diwakar Raote led the Sena minister's delegation to CM Fadnavis and raised the issue over which Fadnavis assured them to have a meeting with Desai on Thursday.
"Shiv Sena is strongly against the project and party president shall soon make the party's stand over it clear to the people," Raote told the media after the cabinet meeting.
Meanwhile, Shiv Sena president Uddhav Thackeray denied meeting petroleum minister Dharmendra Pradhan, who had sought Thackeray's time to explain him the situation, party sources said.
Thackeray, while interacting with media at party headquarters on Wednesday declined to comment over the issue. "We are dead against the project. The government should not engage in killing time. I don't want to be part of the game by giving comments over the issue," he said.