PUNE: On a day the Maha Vikas Aghadi constituents observed a bandh in Maharashtra against the Lakhimpur Kheri incident, the BJP on Monday took a veiled swipe at NCP chief Sharad Pawar, who had compared the Lakhimpur Kheri incident with the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, and recalled the 2011 Maval police firing incident in which three farmers were killed in Pune district when the Congress-NCP combine was in power.
Police had opened fire on August 9, 2011, on farmers agitating against a proposed drinking water supply pipeline from the Pavana dam to Pimpri-Chinchwad city in the Pune district, killing three of them.
Leader of Opposition in Maharashtra Legislative Council Pravin Darekar on Monday met with the family members of the farmers killed in the police firing and paid tribute.
"Whatever happened in Lakhimpur Kheri was condemnable.
That incident cannot be supported.
However, politics is being played by capitalising on the Lakhimpur incident in the name of farmers.
Has the martyrdom of these farmers (killed in the Maval firing) gone waste?" he questioned.
Without taking the name of NCP chief Sharad Pawar, Darekar said while the Lakhimpur Kheri incident is likened to the Jallianwala Bagh massacre but the "horrific shooting of farmers had taken place here in Maval".
"Why 1,300 farmers from Maval are not yet rehabilitated? I came here to expose the farce and politics behind all this (bandh)," he told reporters.