Mumbai:
The farmer whose hunger strike provoked Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar to make a crass remark on drought-hit Maharashtra's water shortage, is shifting his protest today from Mumbai's Azad Maidan to outside the house of the Chief Minister, who is likely to make a statement in the Assembly on the incident today.
Prabhakar Deshmukh had been on hunger strike for over two months and not many knew. This weekend Mr Pawar ensured national attention for his efforts to demand water for the parched fields of poor farmers like him when he said at a public meeting, "There is this person from Solapur, sitting on hunger strike for 64 days demanding water be released from the dam. But where are we going to get water from? Should we urinate? And when we don't have water to drink, it's hard to pass urine as well."
Mr Pawar has since called it the "biggest mistake of his political life" but he is unlikely to be forgiven in a hurry. Mr Deshmukh said, "It's our right to have water. Farmers have lost acres of land due to water shortage but nobody is concerned about it. Why is water being provided to a liquor factory and not farmers?"
Political rivals will continue to remind Mr Pawar of his indiscretion too. A urinal in Jalna, a part of Marathwada mangled by drought, has been named after the Nationalist Congress Party leader as retribution. The poster on the urinal has been put up by Arvind Kejriwal's Aam Aadmi Party and says: " Aam Aadmi Party Jalna protests Ajit Pawar's statement of offering urine to the parched, drought stricken people."
Other parties like the BJP have demanded Mr Pawar's resignation.