Activist Manoj Jarange-Patil and his supporters have been staging an agitation demanding reservation for the Maratha community at the Azad Maidan in Mumbai. Maratha quota activist Manoj Jarange-Patil broke his fast on Tuesday evening, ending his agitation on its fifth day, after Maharashtra minister Radhakrishna Vikhe-Patil handed him a copy of a state government resolution accepting his demands.
This meant his supporters would start leaving Mumbai as he had set a 9pm deadline for the order to be issued after ministers showed him a draft earlier. He took a sip of juice from Vikhe-Patil, in the presence of the cabinet sub-committee members, as his supporters cheered at Azad Maidan. He was taken to a hospital for a checkup immediately.
His supporters were already celebrating across prime areas in Mumbai upon his “we’ve won” claim just a couple of hours earlier, after three state ministers reached Azad Maidan in the afternoon and held talks with him. The meeting came as Jarange and his supporters were facing a deadline by the high court to vacate Azad Maidan by 3 pm.
Minister Vikhe-Patil, who heads the cabinet sub-committee on the Maratha quota, showed him the draft proposal at that meeting. Jarange accepted the draft which included implementing the Hyderabad gazette for issuing Kunbi caste certificates to Marathas — effectively granting them OBC status and, thus, reservation. Kunbis are traditionally seen as a peasant sub-caste of the Marathas.
More minutely, the protesters was demanding that all Marathas in Marathwada (central Maharashtra) be treated as Kunbis, as they were during the Nizam rule. To that end, the BJP-led state government has accepted the demand for implementation of the Hyderabad and Satara gazettes, a notification announcing that Marathas and Kunbis are one and the same, and implementation of the “Sage Soyare” (blood and marital relatives) notification issued last year, he said.
The proposal also said cases against Maratha protesters would be withdrawn by the end of September, and compensation would be given to the families of those who lost their lives during the quota agitation.
He had said he would end his ongoing hunger strike and vacate Azad Maidan once a formal government resolution (GR) is issued. “We will leave Mumbai by 9 pm if the Maharashtra government issues GRs (government resolutions),” he had said.
The Bombay high court has earlier warned of action, including exemplary cost and contempt action, if Jarange and his supporters did not vacate the place. A bench of acting chief justice Shree Chandrashekhar and justice Aarti Sathe said it wanted complete normalcy restored by 3 pm, and if not, then they too will get on the streets. Jarange and his supporters have violated the law and hence have no right to occupy Azad Maidan without any permission.
