Mumbai, July 9: Launching a scathing attack on Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis over the recent water leakage inside the Mumbai-Pune Expressway ‘Missing Link’ tunnel, Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) Chief Raj Thackeray on Thursday accused the MahaYuti government of hiding its failures behind emotional rhetoric.

Addressing the anniversary event of the MNS Railway Kamgar Sena, the MNS Chief questioned the Chief Minister’s defence in the Legislative Assembly and hit back at his remarks warning the Opposition against “politicising” the issue.

Taking a swipe at Chief Minister Fadnavis’s objection to the Opposition’s criticism, Raj Thackeray said, “Wow! He (Devendra Fadnavis) says don’t politicise it. When anyone speaks out, it becomes ‘politics’ to them. What were you doing all those years when you were in the Opposition? Weren’t the agitations you staged against previous governments ‘politics’? Now that the heat is on you, you claim the Opposition is playing politics.”

He also dismissed the Chief Minister’s emotional appeal in the House, where Devendra Fadnavis had said that he could tolerate personal attacks but not the insult of Maharashtra.

“People are raising genuine questions about the Missing Link project. Where is the insult to Maharashtra in that?” he asked.

“If anyone speaks against the Central government, they are labelled ‘anti-national’. If someone speaks about the Missing Link, it is called an insult to Maharashtra! Are citizens not supposed to ask you questions at all?” Raj Thackeray added.

The MNS Chief also targeted Chief Minister Fadnavis for issuing warnings to critics and suddenly shifting languages during his Assembly speech.

“The Chief Minister (Devendra Fadnavis) declared in the Assembly that the Missing Link features top-notch construction quality and threatened to ‘deal with’ those politicising it. Listen, you are the Chief Minister. What do you mean by ‘I will deal with you’?” Raj Thackeray remarked.

The MNS Chief also said, “After saying all this, the Chief Minister suddenly started speaking in Hindi. Who was he speaking in Hindi for? The MLAs sitting in front of him are Marathi, the Legislative Assembly belongs to Maharashtra, yet our Chief Minister speaks in Hindi. Why? Perhaps Devendra Fadnavis wanted to send a message to his party bosses at the top, telling them that ‘I will deal with them’. Even he (Devendra Fadnavis) knows where these leak videos are originating from. There is massive internal infighting brewing within the BJP — just wait and watch what happens next.”

Turning his focus to the state of infrastructure, Raj Thackeray alleged widespread corruption in government contracts, claiming it has severely compromised construction quality.

“They (MahaYuti government) have completely ruined Mumbai, Maharashtra, and Thane, and this government calls it ‘development’. Construction is happening everywhere you look; the Chief Minister should just shut down all this construction. Building just roads and flyovers does not equate to development. I honestly don’t understand what these people learn when they travel abroad,” the MNS Chief said.

Highlighting the structural flaws of the mega-project, Raj Thackeray said, “The Missing Link project was inaugurated on May 1. Now, in July, water is leaking through it. A brand-new tunnel started leaking within just 60 to 65 days! During the inauguration, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis was boasting about how materials for the project were sourced from various countries. But the moment you hand it over to Indian contractors, they do exactly what they always do.”

He concluded with a serious allegation regarding contractor kickbacks.

“Some contractors are openly saying that they have to pay 56 per cent of the contract value as bribes to people in the state government. If they have to execute the project with just the remaining 44 per cent of the budget, this is exactly the kind of roads you are going to get,” the MNS Chief said.

Pune, July 9: Rescue teams recovered one body from the debris of the building that collapsed at a waste management plant in Pimpri Chinchwad near Pune on Thursday, while nine people have been rescued so far as multi-agency teams continued intensive search operations to trace those still trapped beneath the rubble, officials said.

The three-storey structure, situated above a waste-to-energy plant at Moshi, came crashing down on Wednesday afternoon after a massive mound of legacy waste collapsed onto the building, burying the structure and trapping around 18 people under the debris.

Seven people were rescued within hours of the incident, while two more were pulled out safely after midnight, taking the total number of survivors to nine.

Providing an update on the ongoing rescue efforts, a senior National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) official said one body was recovered on Thursday morning, while the locations of two more bodies have also been identified beneath the debris.

“The NDRF is doing its best. We are making our entry from the horizontal space, which has been dug manually with the help of hands and that all. And we have reached and narrowed it down to two bodies, while another one has been recovered,” Commandant of the 5th Battalion of the NDRF, S.B. Singh, told reporters.

“Three bodies have been traced. One has been recovered; the other two are still under rubble, of which the second is visible from afar, but it will take some time,” he added.

Singh said the operation remained extremely challenging as the damaged structure was in a highly unstable condition, posing a constant risk to rescuers working at the site.

“The first and foremost challenge is that the building can collapse, in which my rescuers can be caught. So, that is the greatest challenge, because the building is highly unstable and a lot of load is there. To find out the structural stability of the building, we are trying our best, in whichever way we can enter, so that further collapse doesn’t happen; whoever is trapped inside, they don’t get further suppressed or burdened by a lot of rocks and a lot of concrete material. So, that’s the greatest challenge we are facing,” he added.

He further explained that access to the collapsed building was extremely difficult because the structure had tilted at an angle of nearly 45 degrees, leaving rescuers with no option but to crawl through narrow openings to reach those trapped inside.

Singh said heavy machinery could not be used to remove the concrete debris as the vibrations could trigger another collapse, further endangering both the trapped victims and rescue personnel. As a result, teams are carefully removing the rubble manually.

“It will certainly take time, but we’ll do our best,” he said.

The NDRF officer also stated that despite using advanced life detection equipment, including life detectors, acoustic sensors and sniffer dogs, rescuers had not detected any signs of life beneath the debris.

Officials said several employees of Antony Lara Renewable Energy, which operates the 14 MW waste-to-energy plant in partnership with the Pimpri Chinchwad Municipal Corporation (PCMC), were among those trapped when the building collapsed.

The PCMC had initially stated that 23 people were believed to be trapped under the debris. Of them, five managed to escape on their own before rescue teams reached the site and launched operations.

The rescue mission is being carried out jointly by personnel from the National Disaster Response Force, the Indian Army, the Pimpri Chinchwad Municipal Corporation Fire Brigade, the Pune Metropolitan Region Development Authority Fire Brigade and the police.

Mumbai: Samajwadi Party MLA from Bhiwandi East Raees Sheikh has demanded that the committee announced by Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis in the Legislative Assembly on Thursday (9th) to draft the Uniform Civil Code (UCC) Act has not given adequate representation to all minority communities and the Muslim community should be represented in this committee.

Speaking in this regard, MLA Raees Sheikh said that the minority community in Maharashtra is 20 percent. It includes six communities namely Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, Jains, Sikhs and Parsis. Among these communities, the largest number is only the Muslim community which constitutes 11 percent of the total population of the state. Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis today announced a 7-member committee in the Legislative Assembly. Not a single Muslim representative has been included in it. The Uniform Civil Code is most closely related to the Muslim community. There is confusion and fear among the Muslim communities regarding this code. Therefore, there is a need to give representation to the Muslim community in this committee. The state government cannot implement a uniform civil code without taking the Muslim community or the minority community as a whole into confidence. The government should not take a unilateral decision regarding this law. Raees Sheikh demanded that the committee be reconstituted by including a representative of the Muslim community in the 7-member committee headed by former Justice Ranjana Desai. MLA Raees Sheikh also said that we will soon meet Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis in this regard.