After PWD, MNS Men Damage Mumbai Road to Protest Pothole Deaths

MNS workers attacked the PWD office in Navi Mumbai and also destroyed roads in the city to protest pothole deaths

Image used for representational purposes.

(Photo Courtesy: Twitter/@LocalPressCo)

Workers of the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) damaged the road in front of the state secretariat, Mantralaya in Mumbai, on early Tuesday morning, 17 July, to protest rising incidents of pothole related deaths in the city.

At senior police official told PTI that at least eight MNS workers were arrested in connection to the case

A group of around 20 workers of the MNS gathered outside the Mantralaya around 3 am on 17 July and started digging up a footpath using spades and other tools to protest against the potholes on roads.

Senior police official to PTI

Earlier on 16 July, MNS workers vandalised the office of the Public Works Department (PWD) in Navi Mumbai over the same issue.

In a video that captured the attack on the PWD office, workers of the MNS were seen aggressively throwing furniture and computers, and damaging government property.

The MNS, in a statement to Marathi daily Loksatta, had termed the attacks on the PWD office a ‘surgical strike’. The police, had arrested five MNS office bearers in this case, the Loksatta 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.

(With inputs from PTI, Loksatta.)

(This is a developing story.)