New Delhi: Telugu actress turned Independent MP, Navneet Kaur Rana, on Monday claimed that she was threatened by Shiv Sena lawmaker Arvind Sawant for raising Vaze-extortion-racket in Lok Sabha.
In a communication to Lok Sabha Speaker, Om Birla, she said, “….sawal uthane par mujhe Shiv Sena sansad Arvind Sawant ne Lok Sabha lobby mein bola ki tu Maharashtra mein kaisi ghumti hae; aur tere ko bhi jail mein daalenge (For raising matters related to extortion racket by Mumbai policeman Sachin Vaze, Sena member Arvind Sawant threatened me in Lok Sabha lobby, how would I henceforth able to roam about in Maharashtra and that I could be jailed)”.
In her missive to the Speaker, the Independent lawmaker demanded that there should be adequate “police action” against Sena MP. Sawant was incidentally Union Minister in the Modi cabinet but later quit after Sena parted ways from BJP and joined hands with Congress and NCP to form a government headed by Uddhav Thackeray in Maharashtra.
In 2019, actress-turned-neta Navaneet Kaur wrested the seat from Sena defeating Anandrao Adsul. While she had polled 5,10,947 votes making as high as 45.95 per cent of voters in the constituency, Sena candidate and sitting member could get only 4,73,996 votes.
As Sena was part of the NDA then, there was no BJP candidate in the constituency.
Born and brought up in Mumbai, Navneet Kaur’s parents are of Punjabi origin and her father was an army official.
Incidentally, she had contested from Amravati as an NCP candidate in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls and had finished second to Sena leader Adsul.
During Zero Hour on Monday (March 22), expressing concern about the extortion racket, Ms Rana had urged for a probe into the entire issue and wondered how suspended API Sachin Waze for 16 years was ‘reinstated’.
“On what basis was a man (Vaze) suspended for 16 years and jailed and then reinstated again…When there was BJP government, Uddhav Thackeray himself had called up Devendra Fadnavis (then CM) seeking to reinstate of Sachin Waze, Fadnavis had refused. When the Thackeray government came, they reinstated him. All these need to be investigated properly,” she had said in Lok Sabha. She also said – if from Mumbai alone Rs 100 crore could be extorted, “just imagine what could be the amount from the state of Maharashtra”.
Later talking to television channels, she said, such tactics from Sena leaders would not stop her from raising these issues.
