Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) chief Raj Thackeray has been taken to the Supreme Court in a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) seeking its intervention to end the ongoing Marathi language controversy. The PIL, filed by Advocate Ghanshyam Upadhyay, alleges that Thackeray incited violence and instigated hatred towards people who speak Hindi in the state of Maharashtra. The plea further wants an FIR against Raj Thackeray and the members of his party registered since he and other members were involved in the attack and threats against non-Marathi speakers.
The PIL follows a row of other shocking cases of MNS workers. Recently, the MNS activists beat up the owner of a sweet shop in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region because the shop owner was not conversant in Marathi. In a different instance, they set the office of a share market investor at Worli with whom they vandalised the office of a share market investor, Sushil Kedia, at Mumbai, saying that he would not speak Marathi and openly taking an exception to Raj Thackeray.
The row escalated after a rally on July 5, when the MNS leader Raj Thackeray and Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Uddhav Thackeray were seen on one stage to protest the imposition of Hindi in the state of Maharashtra. This was organized on an occasion where the government of Maharashtra decided to repeal a government resolution (GR) on how to include Hindi as a third language of study in primary schools.
Another letter, signed by advocates Pankaj Mishra, Nityanand Sharma, and Ashish Rai, has been written to the police stating that the recent events posed serious challenges to social peace and law and order. This letter was in response to a speech made by Raj Thackeray at the rally on the 5th July that was critical and considered to be one that encouraged the MNS activists to take a violent stance against the Hindi-speaking inhabitants by linking it to a recent attack on a senior citizen.
The pro-activists have issued a call that the police should come down hard under the National Security Act (NSA) and declare the trouble-makers as anti-national and an iron hand should deal with them in order to maintain national integrity and tranquility.
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