Shiv Sena disowns threat to disrupt talk
Shiv Sena which had jumped into the Jaitapur farmers’ agitation against the proposed nuclear power plant, is trying to distance itself from the latest controversy involving some of their supporters in Pune threatening to disrupt a scientific conference wherein former Atomic Energy Commission chairman and a strong votary of nuclear power, Dr Anil Kakodkar, was to deliver a lecture.
Shiv Sena activists, on Monday morning, issued a diktat that they would not allow Dr Kakodkar to deliver a lecture in a symposium organised by Pune's famed Agharkar Research Institute of Biological and Botanical Sciences (ARI,) scheduled late in the evening.
Even as ARI organisers were trying to come to terms with the diktat, Shiv Sena spokesperson talking to this newspaper said: “We are trying to find out details about the so-called threats, reportedly made by our party workers.”
However, senior party functionaries, tacitly admitted that threatening “...eminent nuclear scientist Dr Kakodkar from speaking was certainly not correct. After all it is a scientific meet and purely a technical seminar.” The lecture after much flip-flop and vacillation by SS, passed off peacefully, and Dr Kakodkar reportedly abstained from mentioning ‘Jaitapur project,’ in his lecture.
Dr Kakodkar, late last week had suffered a setback when a two-day conference on nuclear power organised by Pune's College of Engineering, at Abasaheb Marathe Arts, Commerce and Science College at Hativale in Rajapur in Ratnagiri district, scheduled for Tuesday, was cancelled following protests.
