Hundreds of activists in eastern Maharashtra revived the clamour for a separate Vidarbha State on the occasion of “Maharashtra day” on Tuesday, as they took out a morcha to Vidhan Bhavan in Nagpur to press for the long-standing demand for a separate statehood status to their region.
The activists, owing allegiance to Vidarbha Rajya Andolan Samiti, raised slogans like “Jai Vidarbha” and flashed “Vidarbha State flags” that they were carrying, as the walked in a procession to the Vidhan Bhavan in Nagpur, the second capital of Maharashtra where the winter sessions of the State legislature are held every year, to press for their demand.
After reaching the State legislature premises, the agitators tried unsuccessfully to unfurl the Vidarbha state flag atop the Vidhan Bhavan.
In their bid to quell the agitating mobs and prevent them to unfurl the Vidarbha flag atop Vidhan Bhavan, the police resorted to lathi-charge and also took several of the activists present.
This is not for the first time that the activists belonging to Vidarbha Rajya Andolan Samiti have raised the Vidarbha statehood issue during the Maharashtra day celebrations.
It may be recalled that on May 1, 2016, the Maharashtra day celebrations had been married by vociferous clamour for separate Vidarbha and Marathawada states, with the supporters of the two new states hoisting the flags representing their respective regions and the Vidarbha protagonists resorting to road blockades in Nagpur and violence at Yavatmal in support of their demand.
Though Vidarbha region had in the past witnessed unfurling of their regional flag on the Maharashtra day, sections of people in Marathwada voiced for the first time their demand for a separate state by hoisting their regional flag carrying a map of Marathwada at Jalna.
Former Maharashtra Advocate General Shreehari Aney -- who has long been a votary of a separate Vidarbha state and whose controversial remarks clamouring for a separate Marthawada state led to his resignation from his Constitutional post in March 2016 —had hoisted a multi-coloured Vidarbha flag at a private resort at Bajaj Nagar Square in Nagpur.
A group of people had hoisted a flag demanding separate Vidarbha in State Finance Minister Sudhir Mungantiwar’s home district of Chandrapur even as the minister was busy celebrating “Maharashtra day” elsewhere.
On this day two years ago, separate Vidarbha flags had been hoisted in as many as 23 towns in the region, including Wardha, Yavatmal and Amravati, in support of a separate state. The activists in these towns also observed “Maharashtra day” as a black day in protest against the merger of the then Vidarbha, the Central Provinces and Berar into Maharashtra on 1 May, 1960.