Sharad Pawar guilty of repressive action against Gowari community in Nagpur in 1994: Siddharth Nath Singh

Lucknow: Reacting strongly to NCP leader Sharad Pawar’s remarks on the Lakhimpur incident, the senior Uttar Pradesh minister and government spokesperson Siddharth Nath Singh reminded him of the heart-wrenching incident of 1994 of Maharashtra in which 114 persons from the Gowari community were killed and about 500 injured during a stampede due to police lathi charge.

He said the lathi-charge was done on the Gowaris at the behest of Sharad Pawar, the then  Chief Minister of Maharashtra. Serious allegations of incompetence and negligence were leveled against his government. “Pawar was guilty of the incident as it was on his instructions that the police took repressive action against innocent people of Gowari community in Nagpur. A large number of women and children were also among the dead and injured.”

Expressing a strong reservation to the statement of Pawar in which he equated Lakhimpur incident to Jalinwalan incident,  Singh said that the them Pawar government had not even expressed regret over the incident that happened during Sharad Pawar’s tenure as the Chief Minister and instead of helping the people of the downtrodden class people, they had suppressed them.

He said that if senior leaders like Pawar, carrying the stigma of such a big incident, make unsavory remarks on the Lakhimpur incident, it does not seem appropriate from any point of view. The senior UP minister said that soon after the Lakhimpur incident, the Yogi government sent senior officials to conduct a fair investigation and ordered a judicial inquiry as well.

Siddharth Nath Singh said that Sharad Pawar should tell whether he could not have done an impartial investigation on that incident in Nagpur, while the Yogi government took prompt action along with giving financial assistance to the family of the deceased and registering an FIR against the culprits. “Pawar has no moral right to make such comments, ” said Singh.