Workers of the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) armed with shovels and other equipment, damaged the Madame Cama road in front of the state secretariat, Mantralaya in Mumbai, around midnight on 17 July, to protest rising incidents of pothole related deaths in the city.
MNS workers decided to protest against the deplorable condition of city roads outside the Mantralaya. Shouting slogans and armed with tools, they soon began breaking the sidewalk outside the secretariate in a bid to garner attention. While one of the men waved the national flag, the remaining ten to twelve people repeatedly landed blows on the sidewalk and began throwing debris on the main road itself.
At senior police official told PTI that at least eight MNS workers were arrested in connection to the case.
Earlier on the same fateful day of 16 July, MNS workers vandalised the office of the Public Works Department (PWD) in Navi Mumbai over the same issue.
The MNS, in a statement to Marathi daily had termed the attacks on the PWD office a ‘surgical strike’. The police, had arrested 8 office bearers in this case, the ANI report added.
The attacks came a day after Maharashtra PWD Minister Chandrakant Patil’s comments on 15 July that potholes could not be blamed for accidents.
Accidents on pothole-ridden roads claimed four lives in Kalyan area in the last two weeks. In all these cases, victims lost balance and fell when their vehicles hit a pothole, PTI reported.