The story so far: Since late August this year, 41-year-old Maratha quota activist Manoj Jarange-Patil hailing from Maharashtra’s drought-prone Marathwada region, has brought the Eknath Shinde government to its knees by demanding a blanket reservation in education and government jobs for all Marathas in the State. Mr. Jarange-Patil withdrew his second hunger fast on November 2 after a government delegation convinced him to grant them more time (till January 2, 2024) to complete the process of granting reservation to the Marathas by giving them Other Backward Class (OBC) certificates and including them in the OBC Kunbi category.
How did it come about?
The immediate trigger for a renascent Maratha quota agitation was a violent fracas on September 1 between protesters and police in the Antarwali Sarati village in Jalna district (400 km from Mumbai), where Mr. Jarange-Patil, hitherto unknown, had been protesting since August 29. The police accused the protestors of starting the violence by pelting stones on security personnel while the agitators claimed that the police had carried out an unwarranted lathi-charge on them, causing grievous injuries.
The issue became swiftly politicised, and despite public apologies by Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and Mr. Shinde, Mr. Jarange-Patil went on an indefinite hunger strike, giving up even drinking water. The activist finally, after Mr. Shinde’s repeated cajoling, called off the strike on September 14, by giving the government a 40-day deadline to complete the process for all Marathas to be treated as members of the OBC Kunbi community. The CM announced the setting up of a five-member committee under Justice (retd.) Sandeep Shinde to determine the Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for giving OBC certificates to the Marathas.
However, on the expiry of the deadline on October 24, Mr. Jarange-Patil started his second hunger strike. He declared that all politicians be banned from entering villages until the Marathas got their quota.
Who is Manoj Jarange-Patil?
Manoj Jarange-Patil who hails from a family of farmers was once the Youth Congress district chief of Jalna. He resigned this post in 2003 to float his own outfit titled the ‘Shivba Sanghatana’. The nature of Mr. Jarange-Patil’s protests hark back to 1982 when Annasaheb Patil, a Congress lawmaker from Satara had gone against his party’s line by demanding reservation based on economic criteria. He had warned the Congress-led government that he would take his life if the demands were not met and in 1982, had tragically shot himself. Like Annasaheb before him, Mr. Jarange-Patil has earned a reputation for himself as someone who “cannot be managed” by the ruling powers.
His pressure on the government comes at a time when the ruling BJP is politically vulnerable in Maharashtra, struggling to maintain harmony between its fractious coalition allies — CM Shinde’s Shiv Sena and Ajit Pawar’s Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) faction — and keep its core OBC voter base in Vidarbha intact.
When did the quota agitation start?
The Maratha quota issue made headlines in 2016, when the rape-murder of a minor girl belonging to the Maratha community in Ahmednagar’s Kopardi, had spurred a wave of nearly 60 ‘muk morchas’ (silent rallies) by the Marathas which went on for nearly two years across the State. The rallies brought to the fore the community’s long-standing claim for Maratha reservation. However, they had been largely peaceful.
In contrast, Mr. Jarange-Patil’s agitation during his second hunger strike caused chaos in Marathwada and elsewhere, with activists vandalising vehicles and torching homes of politicians and people connected to them. For a while, these activists blocked State and national highways, disrupting bus services and threatening to throw commute completely off-kilter. The violence has been an indication of the collective rage against both opposition and ruling politicos for their shallow promises over the years. Despite 12 of Maharashtra’s 20 Chief Ministers hailing from the Maratha community, a quota has still proved elusive for the Marathas.
In 2018, the Maharashtra legislature had unanimously passed a Bill giving 16% reservation to the Maratha community in jobs and education by according them the status of Socially and Economically Backward Class (SEBC). However, it was eventually scrapped by the Supreme Court in 2021.
Where is it headed?
Mr. Jarange-Patil’s insistence of OBC caste certificates has provoked counter protests from the OBC community across Maharashtra, who are fearful of the Marathas eating benefits from their 19% reservation pie. The OBC community has been getting disaffected by the State government’s apparent subservience to Mr. Jarange-Patil’s demands, with community leaders warning of sustained agitation if it issued Marathas with OBC certificates. The agitation has also had a knock-on effect, with Dhangar community members launching protests across the State, seeking to be included in the Scheduled Tribes (ST) category.
To pacify Mr. Jarange-Patil, CM Shinde and his cabinet have accepted the first report presented by the Justice Shinde committee and issued a Government Resolution, to decide the procedure for granting Kunbi caste certificates to Marathas in the Marathwada region. However, the Shinde-BJP-NCP are in a tight spot, with Mr. Jarange-Patil warning that he would “choke” the lifelines of all politicians, if they failed to deliver a quota before the second deadline.
