Versova beach cleanup resume today, Fadnavis, Aaditya Thackeray help Afroz Shah

Mumbai: Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and Yuva Sena chief Aaditya Thackeray on Sunday muddied their pants picking trash as the Versova beach cleanup campaign resumed after a brief gap.

Fadnavis and Aaditya joined the beach cleaning drive with activist Afroz Shah, who has won praise from Prime Minister Narendra Modi, for the initiative.

Fadnavis congratulated Shah and the ‘entire team’ for relentlessly contributing towards the ‘Swachh Bharat Abhiyan’. The Chief Minister also interacted with school children who participated in the drive at Versova on Sunday afternoon.

When the cleanup resumed at Versova beach on Saturday, hundreds of students from schools and colleges had lined up in their bright uniforms, to do their bit.

Supreme Court Justice D Y Chandrachud, while delivering a speech in Mumbai at the National Conference on Environment on Saturday, had spoken about a “young Afroz Shah and volunteers, including celebrities, ordinary citizens, slum-dwellers and politicians alike” who were transforming the beach in what the UN Environment has dubbed, the largest cleanup.

Chandrachud, a former Bombay high court judge, had mentioned how the initiative resumed after a hiccup with help from the office of the Maharashtra chief minister.

Shah, whose initiative to clean up the Versova beach was suspended after facing harassment from some anti-social elements, had last month met the Maharashtra chief minister, who had assured him all help in the cleanliness campaign.