Thane: The driver of Thane mayor Sharmila Pimpalkar abused and attacked a television news cameraman on the premises of the Thane Municipal Corporation, an incident that follows a separate attack on journalists in neighbouring Mira-Bhayandar.
On Tuesday, a news channel's outside-broadcast vehicle was parked in the civic compound when the mayor's driver, Sunil Kharpade, walked up and began abusing the crew. The channel's cameraman, Vinay Mhaske, asked him for his response, and a show-cause notice was issued to Kharpade.
The mayor belongs to the Shiv Sena's Shinde faction.
The flashpoint comes days after BJP corporators were accused of assaulting journalists and citizens at a Mira-Bhayandar Municipal Corporation general body meeting. That incident is said to have occurred on Friday.
Transport minister Pratap Sarnaiik has demanded that the posts of the BJP corporators who attacked journalists and citizens, and of the BJP MLA who went to the municipal commissioner's residence after midnight and pressed his demands until dawn, be cancelled. He has written to the governor, chief minister, deputy chief minister and the director general of police.
BJP MLA Narendra Mehta reached the municipal commissioner's residence past midnight with hundreds of workers after the Friday violence, reports say. Sarnaiik alleged the crowd pressured the commissioner to stop false cases. Mehta has said his meeting was pre-planned, and that he wanted the names of absent councillors removed from a police list.
Sarnaiik spoke to reporters in Thane on Tuesday, linking the attack on the cameraman to the wider deterioration he alleges.
Everyone is now watching what the administration does next.