RSS veteran MG Vaidya too supports Maharashtra division

MUMBAI: Former RSS spokesperson MG Vaidya has supported Shrihari Aney — the advocate-general of the Maharashtra government who resigned on Tuesday — and said Maharashtra should be divided into four.

Aney quit following an outcry over his statement that a Marathwada state should be carved out of Maharashtra. While pointing to ‘impropriety’ of an AG making the demand, Vaidya said that he favoured division of Maharashtra into four states. “The population of a state should not exceed 3 crore and it should not be less than 50 lakh people.

Smaller states are easier to govern and I have always advocated it,” Vaidya told ET. Following the political turmoil over his remark, Aney had on Tuesday met governor C Vidyasagar Rao and submitted his resignation.

The Shiv Sena had threatened that it would not attend the Cabinet or even ‘co-operate’ in the assembly unless the government sacks Aney. “The CM told me that this was a political fight and he would handle it.

However, the state budget would not have passed and I didn’t want the people of the state to suffer and hence I put in my papers,” Aney told journalists on Tuesday.

He said that Babasaheb Ambedkar had spoken about creating three states from Maharashtra — Marathwada, Vidarbha and Deccan. Justifying the creation of smaller state, Vaidya said that it was better to divide the state before people start an agitation. Maharashtra Navnirman Sena chief Raj Thackeray alleged that Vaidya’s and Aney’s comments were as a result of the BJP and RSS testing the waters on Maharashtra’s division.

However Vaidya said that he would not like to comment on Thackeray’s statements. The Congress which tried to corner the government in the legislature on Aney’s statement, meanwhile, suffered a major embarrassment when its former minister Nitin Raut backed Aney’s statement.

Raut said that the people of Vidarbha had been subjugated for long and Congress leaders from Vidarbha should have been taken into confidence before the party slammed the BJP over Aney’s statement.