Gadkari's sea-link angle

Nitin Gadkari, minister for surface transport, took a dig at the environmentalists and media people that support them. He recalled a story from his tenure as the PWD minister in Maharashtra in the Shiv Sena-Bharatiya Janata Party government of the 1990s. "We were in the process of clearing the sea-link project. Someone said the project will kill the fish in the sea. So all the media people started writing 'fish mar jaayega' [the fish will die]. One day, I took all those people who were writing about fish in a boat. Before we had sailed a few metres, people started holding their noses because of the stench. 'Yeh poora Mumbai ka gutter ka paani hai. [this is entirely Mumbai gutter water]. Are there any fish here?' I asked them. They said no. Then why are you writing that the sea link will kill the fish? I told them," Gadkari recalled to the obvious enjoyment of his audience.