MUMBAI: Ahead of the Maharashtra assembly elections, fishermen from Palghar district have blamed Shiv Sena for not keeping promises made in 2014.
"All the political parties have ignored the fish worker communities when it comes to sending them to assembly or parliament. But, Shiv Sena had made specific promises to the community in 2014 and haven’t kept them,” said Dr Gajendra Bhanji from Satpati in Palghar district. He is president of National Association of Fishermen.
In 2014 manifesto, the Shiv Sena had promised to complete small and big seaport projects in the state to facilitate the goods and passenger transport. The party had also promised to provide facilities like cold storage, fish drying and processing units at all the 48 ports identified by fisheries department and state maritime board along 720 km of coastline of the state. None of these promises were kept by the party, Bhanji said.
A cursory look at Shiv Sena’s 2014 manifesto shows that the party has not really acted on most of the promises it made five years back.
The party held a transport portfolio for all the five years. However, none of its promises like trauma centres for speedy treatment of road accident victims at highways in the state, or permission for seven-seater taxies, extending lanes of Mumbai-Goa highway, improving ST services, first aid centres along highways, have come true.
The party had made promises on mega projects related to Mumbai. Though some of them have been initiated, none of them has been completed in past five years.
The party made several promises under the head environment, urban development, housing policy, tourism, promotion of Marathi language et al. apart from some specific community-oriented promises like promises for Varkari community or the Dabbewala community in Mumbai.
However, most of the promises have remained unacted like the party’s own mega promise to itself of having a grand memorial of party’s founder late Balasaheb Thackeray in Mumbai. Though most of the hurdles have been done away with the grand memorial is yet to come up.