Mumbai: For years, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) trained its guns on the undivided Shiv Sena over waterlogging in Mumbai every monsoon — but now the tables have turned. It’s on the receiving end this time, over floods in its stronghold of Nagpur.
On Saturday, Nagpur witnessed 119 mm of rain in 24 hours, as opposed to the average of 45 mm. Of that, 90 mm was witnessed in a matter of two hours between 2.15 am and 4.30 am. The rain, unprecedented for the rain shadow region, caused the Ambazari Lake — the city’s largest water body — and the Nag river, from which the city derives its name, to breach their boundaries, swamping the city and killing four people.
Nagpur is the headquarters of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the BJP’s ideological mentor. The unprecedented rain and the subsequent flood have led to the Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) mocking — in particular Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, who represents the Nagpur South West assembly constituency.
Significantly, the BJP had been in power at the Nagpur Municipal Corporation from 2012 to 2022, when its second term ended. Nagpur is among the 24 corporations in the state of Maharashtra whose term has expired in the last three years and are still awaiting elections.
In an editorial in Shiv Sena (UBT) mouthpiece Saamana Tuesday, Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Raut wrote: “Devendra Fadnavis calls himself the ‘suputra’ (son) of Nagpur. In barely four hours of rain, Nagpur was drowned. His lies of development were exposed. The mask came off the face of self-appointed contractors of Nagpur. Will he and his parivaar now do some introspection?”
On his part, Fadnavis, who came under heavy criticism from several quarters when he visited the city Sunday, admitted that although the rain was heavy and unprecedented, the damage could have been contained.
“It hasn’t rained so much in Nagpur in such a short span in the last 25 years,” said Fadnavis Sunday. “It’s true that we don’t have the carrying capacity to drain out so much water in such a short time. But still, we could have minimised the damage if some measures were taken earlier. The India Meteorological Department had given an orange alert but it could not predict this much rain in such a short time. There is always something to learn from such disasters”.
The BJP also maintains that Mumbai and Nagpur are not comparable.
“This is a natural calamity and the Shiv Sena (UBT) should not do politics over it,” Chandan Goswami, a BJP leader from Nagpur and party spokesperson, told ThePrint. “Nagpur and Mumbai are different. And now instead of standing with the people, the Shiv Sena (UBT) is doing politics.”
However, the opposition party criticised this as hypocrisy. “We understand that it rained incessantly but when the same happens in Mumbai, the BJP starts blaming and name-shaming Mumbai and the BMC. Why do they do that,” Shiv Sena (UBT) spokesperson Anand Dubey asked while speaking to ThePrint.
‘Development’ versus ‘climate change’
For 20 years from 1997, the BJP and the then undivided Shiv Sena had together helmed the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), Mumbai’s civic body. In 2017, however, that alliance broke, with both parties fighting that year’s elections separately.
Eventually, the Sena triumphed, ruling the civic body until its term ended in 2022.
In the Saamana editorial Tuesday, Raut wrote that the BJP invariably blames the BMC and the Shiv Sena for waterlogging in Mumbai.
“Mumbai is a congested city, Nagpur is not. Still, your development model was swept away in Saturday’s floods. So who drowned Nagpur? That’s the question every citizen of Nagpur is asking. Fadnavis should answer this question first and then talk big about Nagpur’s development,” the editorial said.
After he was accosted by angry citizens Sunday, Fadnavis said 10,000 houses were affected. He also announced compensation — Rs 10,000 for flood-affected families and small roadside shops and up to Rs 5 lakh for larger establishments.
Goswami said that inspections of 7,000 homes had already been completed. “Gadkari ji (Union highways minister Nitin Gadkari, also from Nagpur) and Fadnavis ji have said that if the compensation is found to be too little, they will review and increase it accordingly,” the BJP leader told ThePrint, adding that Nagpur’s infrastructure had vastly improved in the past 10 years because of his party’s rule.
But former minister and Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Aaditya Thackeray questioned this general notion of development and emphasised the need to focus on climate change.
Taking to X Sunday, Thackeray — who was minister for higher education, environment and tourism when his father, Shiv Sena (UBT) chief Uddhav Thackeray, helmed the Maharashtra government — posted a video of flood-ravaged Nagpur.
We need to realise that blanket concretisation and hacking trees isn’t development. All our cities will face the same situation till we as policy makers don’t understand climate change.
Most politicians wanting to show big projects, are adding fuel to climate change. https://t.co/hyJIAgxNWD
— Aaditya Thackeray (@AUThackeray) September 24, 2023
Politics over floodwater
The BJP has frequently criticised the BMC for waterlogging in Mumbai. In 2021 — when the Mumbai civic body was ruled by the Shiv Sena — Fadnavis’s wife Amruta posted a picture of herself standing in a waterlogged street and showing a thumbs down in protest.
इस शहर में मिल ही जाएँगे, हर मोड़ पर गड्ढे-तालाब,
पर ढूँढोगे तो मुजरिम एक ना मिलेगा जनाब !#MumbaiRains #Monsoon2021 #Mumbai pic.twitter.com/zlrunfCwmR
— AMRUTA FADNAVIS (@fadnavis_amruta) July 16, 2021
Similarly, Mumbai BJP president Ashish Shelar also criticised the civic body over the waterlogging.
“Mumbai was waterlogged in the very first rain. This, despite the BMC spending Rs 70-100 crore every year on drainage desilting, apart from money spent on stormwater projects,” Shelar had said in a video message.
डेब्रीजच्या गोण्या जशाच्या-तशा नाल्यात
पावसाचे पाणी मुंबईकरांच्या घरात…
आणि मलाईच्या गोण्या मात्र
कंत्राटदारांच्या खिशात!आता तरी मुंबईकरांची खरी काळजी करा!#MumbaiRainBMCFail pic.twitter.com/xcHpfL5t2h
— Adv. Ashish Shelar – ॲड. आशिष शेलार (@ShelarAshish) June 9, 2021
Shiv Sena (UBT) spokesperson Anand Dubey, quoted earlier, said that Mumbai’s streets are waterlogged whenever heavy rain is coupled with high tide.
“Because of high tide, the water cannot be drained out. What high tide does Nagpur have,” he asked.
(Edited by Uttara Ramaswamy)
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