Within days of partnering Shiv Sena-BJP, Lok Sabha MP Raju Shetty's SSS party told to pay Rs 80 lakh fine

MUMBAI: Barely a fortnight after Lok Sabha MP Raju Shetty announced that his organisation Swabhimani Shetkari Sanghatana (SSS) will team up with the Shiv Sena-BJP alliance in Maharashtra for the 2014 elections, his party has been served a notice by the district collector of Kolhapur asking him to pay Rs 80 lakh as compensation for the damages it had caused during some agitations in the past few years.

The Opposition parties in Maharashtra were outraged by the order and termed it an ‘action with political agenda’. They even threatened further unrest if the notice isn’t withdrawn. Shetty had led farmers’ agitations in south Maharashtra and got massive response, especially from sugar cane farmers in areas dominated earlier by the Congress and NCP.

The notice by the collector alleges that Shetty was responsible for violence in south Maharashtra’s sugarcane-rich districts of Kolhapur and Sangli in the last two years, which resulted in damages to public and private property running up to Rs 80 lakh.

The notice warns Shetty that if he doesn’t pay up within 30 days, his property will be attached. “This is outrageous. The agitation was a spontaneous action by lakhs of farmers who felt that they were not getting due compensation for their produce. Similar agitations have happened in Maharashtra before -- NCP had launched protests in Mumbai where public property was destroyed; Congress also had been part of many agitations, but they have never been served any notices,” Shetty said in Kolhapur.

The BJP in Maharashtra expressed shock over the decision. The party’s state president Devendra Phadanvis said, “There seems to be some political agenda behind the action of the district administration. There’s no doubt that the administration has done this because of orders from their political masters.”