These are the men and women Mumbai has put its faith in. The new MLAs elected by the city for the next five years have their task cut out as the financial capital’s list of grievances is legendary and their term as legislators could make all the difference between hope and despair. Newsline talks to each of these 36 MLAs and gets them to detail their plans and how they intend to go about implementing them.

Shiv Sena leader and newly elected MLA Ravindra Waikar, who was named in the Srikrishna Commission report for inciting a mob and shouting communal slogans against the Muslims during the height of Hindu-Muslim riots in the sensitive Jogeshwari area, now wants to bury the past. And top on his agenda after the swearing-in ceremony is to work for the “neglected Muslims” who were merely used for “votes by the Congress”.

“I want to work for the development of Muslims. They haven’t got their due from the Congress who in the name of secularism used them to gain power,” Waikar told Newsline. There are large pockets of Muslims in the Jogeshwari constituency, accounting to a strong votebank of 44,000 and more, and Waikar had won from here.

Following his first stint as Sena corporator in 1992, Waikar and another Sena leader Gajanan Kirtikar MLA were accused of leading a mob, on January 4, 1993, towards the Chacha Nagar Masjid in Jogeshwari, shouting anti-Muslim slogans and pelting stones on a mosque where some Muslims had gathered to offer namaaz. Both were acquitted last December for lack of evidence after the prosecution failed to prove its case. “The whole case was a conspiracy by the Congress. How come none of the Congress leaders were named in the report,” he asks.

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