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HomeIndiaGovernanceEye on 2019, Fadnavis govt revives forgotten Marathi Bhavan project to gain...

Eye on 2019, Fadnavis govt revives forgotten Marathi Bhavan project to gain mileage

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Despite assurances over four years to push through proposal, the BJP-led govt finally decided to act. Now there’s a 3-month deadline to finalise location. 

Mumbai: A year before Maharashtra goes to polls, both Parliamentary and for the state assembly, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led state government has begun to revive a project that has the potential to provide it with some political dividend.

The state government has started scouting for land in some of Mumbai’s prime real estate locations to set up a ‘Marathi Bhasha Bhavan’,  a conservatory for the local language. The proposal was first mooted in 2013.

The Devendra Fadnavis government has set up a panel under the chairmanship of BJP Minister Vinod Tawde, who holds the Marathi language department portfolio, to take stock of all available government land in South Mumbai and the plush Bandra Kurla Complex business district. The committee has been given three months to complete the exercise and recommend the most suitable location for the bhavan.

“The idea of having a Marathi Bhasha Bhavan is to bring cohesiveness among the various factions of the Marathi language department by housing them all in one building. Currently, there are four offices of the department scattered across different locations of Mumbai,” said an official from the state Marathi language department.

5 years in the making

The proposal for a Marathi Bhasha Bhavan was first mooted, received cabinet approval and a dedicated budget during the previous Congress-Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) government in the state. That government too had pushed through the proposal (in 2013) a year before the Lok Sabha and state assembly elections.

After taking over the reins, the BJP-led government promised to see the proposal through. In 2016, Tawde even gave an assurance on the floor of the state legislative council that the government would set up the centre within two and three years. But there was little progress on the plan.

Politically too, the Shiv Sena, which has historically fed on language and regional chauvinism, had been putting pressure on its bitter ally to construct the bhavan in South Mumbai, preferably close to the state government headquarters of Mantralaya.

As per the original plan of the Congress-NCP government, the government was to build the Marathi Bhasha Bhavan at Rang Bhavan, the iconic open theatre at Dhobi Talao in South Mumbai.

Rang Bhavan has been out of use since 2013 when the Bombay High Court refused to exempt it from silence zone norms. The plan was to complete the construction of the Rs 80-crore Marathi Bhasha Bhavan with two auditoriums and office spaces in three years.

The project, however, could not move forward as the government did not get heritage clearance to build the centre at Rang Bhavan, prompting the BJP-led state government to drop the idea and start the search for a location afresh.

‘All about politics’

The government’s decision so close to elections has raised questions on the motives behind its move.

“In over three years that the BJP government has been in charge, it has done nothing to push the project forward and is now taking cosmetic steps towards it with elections around the corner, ” said Deepak Pawar, president of the Marathi Abhyas Kendra, a non-government organisation that has been working towards promoting the Marathi language.

He added that if the government really intended to go ahead with the project, it could have figured out a way of securing heritage clearance at Rang Bhavan. “It is shameful that we cannot find a single place close to the government headquarters for our own language,” Pawar said. 

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