MNS attacks Nana Patekar over his stand on hawkers

MUMBAI: The Maharashtra Navnirman Sena led by Raj Thackeray has attacked actor Nana Patekar after he criticised the latest MNS drive against hawkers, saying ‘hawkers too have the right to exist’. Thackeray tore into the actor on Saturday, asking him to desist from speaking without knowing the issue.

He also said that Patekar was silent when Marathi films were not being screened in Mumbai, but it was the MNS that agitated and forced multiplex and theatre owners to screen local movies.

Patekar had defended the hawkers saying that while there shouldn’t be any encroachment, hawkers should also have the right to exist. “The civic body is as much responsible as it didn’t demarcate the spaces for hawkers, and we also never cared,” said Patekar. Interestingly, while actors like Kamal Hassan were targeted for voicing their views in Tamil Nadu, the MNS chief wanted Patekar to take a leaf out of southern actors. “You should see how the actors from southern states fight for the rights of their states, take a leaf from them,” said Raj.

The MNS chief ’s attack on Patekar isn’t surprising though. Maharashtra has a history of political parties targeting sportspersons, and even Sachin Tendulkar wasn’t spared. The cricketer got into trouble with the Shiv Sena when he had said in 2009 that “Mumbai belonged to all Indians” and that he is first an Indian, and then a Maharashtrian.

An irked Sena said that cricketer Sunil Gavaskar did more for Maharashtra as he had got many Mumbai cricketers into the national team but Tendulkar didn’t when he was the national team captain. The bitterness continued into 2011, and when Tendulkar moved into his new bungalow in Bandra, the Sena-controlled BMC fined him.