NCP youth wing chief Suraj Chavan apologises after party workers assault Chhava Sanghatna activists; Ajit Pawar summons him
Chavan said, 'Some television channels are running the news that my supporters beat up Chhava Sanghatna activists because they raised issues concerning farmers. I am the son of a farmer. If anyone is raising the farmers' plight, it is my duty to back them.'
'However, yesterday Chhava Sanghatna activists used unparliamentary language against our party leadership… I would like to apologise for yesterday's incident. I will meet the activists of Chhava Sanghatna to remove any misunderstanding between us,' he stated.
On Sunday, during NCP state chief Sunil Tatkare's press conference in Latur, Chhava Sanghatna activists sought the removal of Agriculture Minister Manikrao Kokate from the Cabinet. In a video, Kokate was earlier seen playing the card game Rummy inside the Maharashtra Legislative Council.
However, while protesting, the activists allegedly hurled a pack of cards at Tatkare and used objectionable words. 'They just didn't throw cards, they also used bad language against our leadership. If anyone is going to behave in this manner, we will give a befitting reply,' Chavan had said after the incident.
Speaking to reporters on Monday, Tatkare said, 'I spoke for one hour at a press conference yesterday during which Chhava Sanghatna activists came to meet me and hand over a memorandum. They threw cards at me. Yet, I quietly received their memorandum and thanked them.'
Tatkare said he did not know what happened outside the press conference venue. 'But when I was apprised about it (the assault), I strongly condemned it. Whatever happened is wrong… 'The NCP will never support such an action by our members,' he said.
Tatkare added that Ajit Pawar has summoned the NCP youth wing chief. 'Chavan has left for Mumbai… I have never supported such things in my political career. At the press conference, I answered all questions relating to farmers. In a democracy, you have to listen to the people's voices,' he said.
Reacting to the assault, Pawar said on Monday, 'The incident that took place yesterday in Latur between office-bearers of the NCP and the Chhava Sanghatna is very serious, unfortunate, and condemnable. I strongly oppose any kind of violence, rude behaviour or unparliamentary language. We sincerely respect the just demands and feelings of every section of the society.'
'I would like to clearly state to all my colleagues and activists: always prioritise the values of democracy, peace, and non-violence while working in social life,' the party chief added.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Mint
5 hours ago
- Mint
Current agri loans over ₹28 lakh crore, but no waiver plan: Govt
The Centre has informed that agricultural loans worth over ₹ 28.5 lakh crore are outstanding but ruled out any plans for a waiver, minister of state in the ministry of finance Pankaj Chaudhary said in response to a question in Lok Sabha on Monday. Responding to Parliamentary questions by Lok Sabha MPs Supriya Sule (Nationalist Congress Party – Sharadchandra Pawar, Maharashtra), Hanuman Beniwal (Rashtriya Loktantrik Party, Rajasthan) and others, the Ministry of Finance informed Monday that outstanding agricultural loans stood at ₹ 28,50,779.43 crore as of March 31, 2025. These are due from 1,762.96 lakh accounts. 'No proposal to waive off the outstanding agricultural loans, is under consideration with Union Government,' the government said. Meanwhile, it is important to note that farmer loans are different from other categories of lending such as personal loans but lately the stance of cooperative banks to insist on credit score for approval of loans has rattled farmers no end. Read this Livemint for details on this. However, it added that several measures have been taken 'to provide relief and to improve the economic conditions of the farmers which inter-alia includes timely and adequate credit through Kisan Credit Card (KCC) under which crop loan up to ₹ 3 lakh is provided at subsidized interest rates under the Modified Interest Subvention Scheme (MISS) with additional incentives for timely repayment, fixation of progressively increased agricultural credit target, issuance of revised Priority Sector Lending guidelines to ensure improved credit flow to the agricultural sector etc.' The top five states in terms of outstanding agricultural loans are Tamil Nadu: ₹ 4,03,367 crore; Andhra Pradesh: ₹ 3,08,716 crore; Maharashtra: ₹ 2,60,799 crore; Uttar Pradesh: ₹ 2,28,560 crore; Karnataka: ₹ 2,22,301 crore. State Loans ( ₹ crore) Rajasthan 1,87,322 MP 1,62,385 Kerala 1,52,198 Telangana 1,44,346 Gujarat 1,44,330 Punjab 1,04,353 (Source: Other states with dues in excess of ₹ 1 lakh crore are Rajasthan: ₹ 1,87,322 crore; Madhya Pradesh: ₹ 1,62,385 crore; Kerala: ₹ 1,52,198 crore; Telangana: ₹ 1,44,346 crore; Gujarat: ₹ 1,44,330 crore; Punjab: ₹ 1,04,353 crore. Apart from Sule and Beniwal, the questions were put up by NCP-SP MPs from Maharashtra: Bhaskar Murlidhar Bhagare, Nilesh Dnyandev Lanke, Mohite Patil Dhairyasheel Rajsinh, Dr Amol Ramsing Kolhe, and Bajrang Manohar Sonwane, Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackrey) MP from Maharashtra Sanjay Dina Patil, and Congress MP, Prof Varsha Eknath Gaikwad, also from Maharashtra. The MPs had also asked 'whether there is any correlation found between outstanding agricultural loans and incidence of farmer suicides in states like Maharashtra and if so, the data available with the Government on such cases during the last five years.' The government said that the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) publication 'Accidental Deaths and Suicides in India' is available till the year 2022 but that it does not specify separate reasons for farmer suicides. The MPs had also asked 'whether any specific categories of farmers marginal, small, tenant, SC/ST are more burdened with outstanding loans and if so, the details thereof' to which the government said that 'NABARD All India Rural Financial Inclusion Survey (NAFIS) for the period of 2021-2022 indicates a generally positive relationship between landholding size and household indebtedness, with the proportion of indebted households increasing as land size increases, up to 1 hectare. Beyond this threshold, a marginal decline in the incidence of indebtedness is observed among households with larger landholdings.' Disclaimer: Mint has a tie-up with fintechs for providing credit, you will need to share your information if you apply. These tie-ups do not influence our editorial content. This article only intends to educate and spread awareness about credit needs like loans, credit cards and credit score. Mint does not promote or encourage taking credit as it comes with a set of risks such as high interest rates, hidden charges, etc. We advise investors to discuss with certified experts before taking any credit.
NDTV
8 hours ago
- NDTV
Who Is Manikrao Kokate: 5-Time MLA, Now At Centre Of Political Storm
Maharashtra's Agriculture Minister Manikrao Kokate is facing mounting political pressure and public criticism after two separate incidents this week. A viral video allegedly showing Mr Kokate playing a mobile card game during a legislative session, followed by his controversial remarks calling the state government a "beggar", has drawn sharp rebuke from opposition leaders. The twin controversies have put pressure on the ruling alliance, particularly the Ajit Pawar-led NCP, which Mr Kokate belongs to. The party does not endorse Mr Kokate's conduct, and a disciplinary action may follow, senior NCP leader Sunil Tatkare said. Who Is Manikrao Kokate? Manikrao Shivaji Kokate was born on September 26, 1957, in Somthana village, Sinnar, in Nashik, Maharashtra. He holds an LLB degree from the University of Pune. A seasoned politician with a career spanning over three decades, Mr Kokate has represented five different political parties: Congress, NCP (Sharad Pawar), Shiv Sena, BJP, and now NCP (Ajit Pawar), while maintaining a stronghold on the Sinnar Assembly Constituency, which he has won five times. He began his political career as a student activist with the NSUI. He gained early recognition by serving in local governance roles such as Chairman of the Sinnar Panchayat Samiti and President of the Nashik Zilla Parishad. He joined the Congress Party at a young age. After being denied a ticket by the newly formed NCP in 1999, he joined the Shiv Sena and won his first assembly election from Sinnar. He retained the seat in 2004. When Shiv Sena leader Narayan Rane left the party to join Congress, Mr Kokate followed and rejoined the INC, winning the 2009 election from Sinnar on a Congress ticket. Ahead of the 2014 assembly elections, he switched to the BJP, but lost to Shiv Sena's Rajabhau Waje. In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, he ran as an Independent from Nashik but again lost to a Shiv Sena candidate. Later in 2019, Mr Kokate returned to the NCP and won the Sinnar Assembly seat for the fourth time. In the 2024 elections, now contesting from Ajit Pawar's NCP, he won (for the fifth time) against Uday Sangale of Sharad Pawar's NCP, with a margin of over 1.38 lakh. He was subsequently appointed the Agriculture Minister in the Maharashtra government. In February 2025, a Nashik court convicted Mr Kokate and his brother in a 1995 cheating and forgery case, involving the misuse of flats under the Economically Weaker Section (EWS) housing quota. The court sentenced both to two years in jail and fined them Rs 50,000 each. Mr Kokate appealed the decision, and the sessions court granted a stay on the conviction and sentence, allowing him to retain his position as an MLA. Last week, a video clip surfaced showing Mr Kokate allegedly playing Junglee Rummy on his mobile phone during a legislative session on tribal dairy welfare. He denied the allegation, saying that the video was misleading and that he was only trying to close a YouTube pop-up ad, not playing a game. Shortly after, Mr Kokate stirred fresh outrage when he said, "The government is the beggar, not the farmers," while addressing irregularities in the Rs 1 crop insurance scheme. He later explained that over 5.5 lakh bogus applications had been received under the scheme, which were immediately cancelled during his tenure.
&w=3840&q=100)
First Post
9 hours ago
- First Post
Nearly a year after Hasina's exit, stability still eludes Bangladesh
August 5, 2025, marks one year since former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina sought refuge in India, following a wave of violent unrest across Bangladesh that left widespread destruction and countless lives lost. Many in the country had hoped that her departure would bring a return to order and stability. Instead, the situation has deteriorated sharply, with law and order collapsing on multiple fronts. A stark example of this is the recent violence in Gopalganj — a traditional stronghold of the Awami League (AL) and home to a significant Hindu minority, comprising nearly 40 per cent of the population of the area. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD The National Citizen Party (NCP), which is believed to enjoy open backing of the ruling dispensation of Muhammad Yunus, in active collaboration with Jammat-e-Islami (JeI) and other communally fanatical parties, resorted to unprovoked violence in attacking the Awami League activists in Gopalganj in an ostensible bid to weaken the AL bastion and demoralise the Hindu population, keeping aloft the communal frenzy. Several people were killed by the security forces, and at the time of writing the column, the city is filled with tension and uneasy calm notwithstanding the imposition of stringent prohibitory orders and security forces resorting to indiscriminate firing resulting in deaths and injuries, and the paramilitary forces and the army are seen in clear visuals protecting the NCP and Jammat activists in the hold of the Armoured Personnel Carriers (APCs) to save them lest their crime be exposed. This spurt of violence in Gopalganj signals that the law and order machinery is still far from satisfactory. Also, according to a prominent Dhaka Daily, Prothom Alo (July 17), the commemorative march marking the July 2024 uprising was planned well in advance by the NCP and its affiliates, and the authorities were obviously indifferent to any wake-up calls or straws in the wind. This also shows complete failure of the intelligence apparatus of the government. Interestingly, the advisor in charge of law and order, Lieutenant General (Retired) Jahangir Alam Chowdhary, is not only an army veteran but also headed the then Bangladesh Rifles (BDR), now renamed as Bangladesh Border Guards (BGB). The ineptitude on the part of the general speaks of a complete lack of oversight in reining in the disturbing law and exercising order and control over the national intelligence with far-reaching security implications. Now, two things are glaring and can't be ignored. One, the Hindus will be more vulnerable in Gopalganj in particular, and the cascading effects of the ensuing violence are likely to reverberate in other Hindu pockets in Bangladesh, where they could possibly be the target of violence, with their places of worship and immovable property more vulnerable to the communal elements. Two, with the tacit support of the interim regime under Muhammad Yunus, anti-AL forces, including the NCP and the Jammat, in all probability, will be emboldened to take on the AL cadres in order to further decimate them. And three, by implication, it is largely believed that the AL and Sheikh Hasina, perceived to be India-inclined, anti-India rhetoric will escalate further amongst the vernacular media and other quarters of the political and social entities. After dwelling upon the Gopalganj violent clashes, which are still fresh in minds, exposing the government's abject failure to contain public order and lawlessness, it would be imperative to examine what all happened within the year post-Hasina's departure from Dhaka. Subsequent to Hasina's departure, complete anarchy prevailed all over Bangladesh, indicating there was no government control or semblance of any law and order. The communal elements, robbers, and criminals had a field day for several months, looting and vandalising at their free will. There were hundreds of prisoners, including hardened criminals, who escaped from the prison, and not only that, there were outrageous lootings of the armouries, broad daylight dacoities, and murders. In addition, the communal elements attacked various minority groups, including Ahmadiyas, Shias, Sufis, etc, and their places of worship were openly desecrated and vandalised. Hindu places of worship were targeted in particular, and many temples were attacked, and their idols were defiled and destroyed. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD While stock taking of the major violent happenings in Bangladesh during the post-Hasina period, it would also be pertinent to highlight the lawlessness when the unbridled violent mob brought down the residence of the father of the nation, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, looting all the pieces kept in the residence-turned-museum and destroying precious possessions reminiscent of the bloody freedom struggle of 1971. Analytically, this shows the mindset of a large number of ungrateful people who shamelessly tampered with history, destroying all evidence of the Liberation War. Sadly, the government, the military, and various arms of police forces were mute witnesses to the destruction, leading the people to believe that there was indeed a government complicity in turning a blind eye when the perpetrators carried out this mindless violent act. Under the circumstances, it would also appear desirable to touch upon some other occurrences in the aftermath of Hasina's departure from the political scene, which had a profound negative impact on the social, political, and cultural fabric of Bangladesh. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD The most disturbing development was the present regime's steady proximity towards Pakistan, which once unleashed such highhandedness with immense ferocity by committing genocide in 1971 without so far tendering any apology for the large cases of violation of Bengali women by Pakistani occupation forces and the grotesque inhuman acts on the Bengalis before the liberation. While it is politically alright for Bangladesh to befriend Pakistan, amnesia should not be to the extent of conveniently forgetting atrocities once so viciously committed. To illustrate further, it would perhaps be politically unwise to observe Pakistan's founder Muhammad Ali Jinnah's 76th death anniversary being held in the National Press Club, Dhaka, in the presence of the Pakistani Deputy High Commissioner. It may be recapitulated that Jinnah, who was anti-Bengali and anti-Bangla, always opposed the use of the Bengali language in place of Urdu. In sum, involving the Pakistani High Commission and remembering Jinnah is indeed a departure from the past and an endorsement of Jinnah's two-nation theory and anti-Bangla ideology. This has also hit hard the secular forces within Bangladesh, the progressives and liberals as well as the freedom fighters and pro-liberation forces. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD In another development post Hasina, there were demands for renaming one of the hostels of Dhaka University to Allama Muhammad Iqbal, who was chiefly responsible for supporting the idea of a separate Pakistan. This trend also merits a close watch as to whether the intelligentsia of Bangladesh is moving towards a direction with Pakistani leanings. In a different vein, it would also appear that there is a subtle move to remove the powerful presence of Tagore amongst the Bangladeshi minds, as he had influenced Bengalis in a big way in the fields of music, dance, literature, drama, etc. A mob vandalised the historic Rabindra Kacharibari in Bangladesh's Sirajganj district, which has an ancestral mansion of Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore, and attacked the auditorium on the mansion premises and assaulted its director in the month of June this year. Following the attack, authorities in Bangladesh shut down the site and formed a probe panel to investigate the incident. It could, however, be an eyewash. It is an irony that this act of vandalism drew more criticism in India than in Bangladesh. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD Meanwhile, another unfortunate incident has come to the fore, which speaks poorly of the Yunus administration and its vision to keep things under control. The old heritage ancestral property belonging to film icon Satyajit Ray's paternal grandfather, Upendra Kishore Ray Chowdhury, was demolished in the district of Mymensingh in Bangladesh very recently to make way for a new semi-concrete structure for Shishu Academy. This bizarre step has naturally hurt the sentiments of hundreds and thousands of Satyajit Ray's fans all over India, leading the governments of India and West Bengal to protest and stop the demolition. Such an outrageous act on the part of the Bangladesh authorities also shows that the Yunus-led administration in Bangladesh is completely insensitive to the sentiments of heritage and ancestral property of Upendra Kishore Ray Chowdhury, who was a noted writer and academic, plus a prominent and progressive social reformer. The strong appeal by the Indian side has forced the government of Bangladesh to rethink the demolition, as it would again expose the present Bangladesh regime in a dim light. Such a glaring amiss, which was perhaps unthinkable during the previous regime, and, therefore, it is important to highlight this while auditing the performance of the present regime in the last nearly one year. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD In an ultimate assessment, it is clear in the preceding year, the present regime has failed to meet people's expectations in the maintenance of law and order, safety and security of the minorities and their places of worship and properties, controlling the communal and fundamentalist forces, or even checking the economic downturn. The government, according to the analysts, has also failed miserably to improve ties with India, with no signs of any improvement. The government-controlled media continues to be hostile and biased amid a sharp rise in human rights abuses as charged by many. It is likely that these factors will play a dominant part in the upcoming elections scheduled some time next year. In fact, a large segment of the population is so miserable and disillusioned that they are silently wanting Hasina's rule back again, perhaps for an orderly and tranquil regime with their dignity intact. The writer is a retired IPS officer, adviser NatStrat, Bangladesh watcher and a security analyst. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost's views. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD
