By IANS
Nagpur : The Maharashtra unit of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has resolved to launch a 'chale jao' (quit power) agitation against the state government for its 'dismal failure on all fronts' in its eight-year rule.
Beginning Aug 9 at the historic August Kranti Maidan in Mumbai, where Mahatma Gandhi gave a clarion call of 'Quit India' to the British government the same day in 1942, the BJP will continue the agitation till the end of the government's tenure, BJP's national general secretary Gopinath Munde said here Friday.
The ruling Democratic Front's term expires in 2009.
Briefing reporters about the political resolution passed at the party's state executive committee meeting, Munde said as many as 30,000 BJP workers will court arrest at the August Kranti ground on Aug 9 to protest against the deteriorating law and order situation, severe power shortage and an abysmally falling economic health of the state.
"With a huge loan of Rs.1,450 billion and a proposed fresh loan of Rs.23 billion, the state that was once number one in India has been relegated behind Bihar and Uttar Pradesh," said Munde, a former deputy chief minister of the state.
The burden of loans is bound to add to the economic woes of the people of the state, which is the costliest in India because of its heavy taxes on petrol and diesel, he added.
Munde, who held home portfolio in the Shiv Sena-BJP alliance government, cited the 'fiasco' of gangster Dawood Ibrahim's sister Hasina Parker's arrest and his brother Iqbal Kaskar's acquittal from the TADA Act case as the latest highlights of the state's 'deteriorating law and order situation'.