Right at the beginning of this week, a delegation of women leaders from the opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) reached Raj Bhavan in south Mumbai to meet the governor of Maharashtra. The delegation was first stopped by the security at the Raj Bhavan gates, but after some commotion, it was later allowed to go inside.

The delegation raised issues related to women's security in the state, both financial and physical. This comes in the wake of rising dowry-related crimes in the state, which have suddenly seen a spike in the last fortnight or so.

For the government, which got the majority in the state assembly mainly on the basis of the Direct Benefit Transfer scheme for women, called the Mukhyamantri Ladki Bahin Yojana, this comes as a challenge. After a dowry-related death in a politically active family in Pune district, a series of similar such cases are now coming to light across the state.

For Chief Minister Fadnavis and Deputy Chief Ministers Ajit Pawar and Eknath Shinde, this is highly damaging, as their main pitch in the latest assembly elections was portraying themselves as "the brother who defends his beloved sister"!

The issue........

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