ith Jats on the reservation rampage, the long-pending Maratha reservation issue has got a shot in the arm with leaders launching fiery rallies all over the State raising the demand again.
The new entrant to the already crowded bandwagon of leaders cutting across party lines is Congress MLA Nitesh Rane, son of former Chief Minister and senior party leader Narayan Rane.
Mr Rane has been camping all over the State, from Kolhapur to Latur and from Phaltan to Tuljapur, joining hands with the Sambhaji Brigade, an aggressive Maratha organisation, preparing for the ‘future agitation’, which he claims will escalate in next two months. While the Congress has maintained a distance from his actions, party sources said it was Rane family’s attempt to become politically relevant, as it had faced a series of defeats in the last elections.
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“My agenda is clear and that is to attain reservation for the Maratha community at any cost,” said Nitesh Rane We do not want to indulge in violence as it was witnessed in Haryana, but as I am addressing rallies after rallies, I can see the young men and women from the community are angered. They want it to be done at any cost.”
His next set of rallies demanding reservation will start from March 6 in Beed. It will be followed by rallies in Hingoli, Jalgaon and Aurangabad.
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“We expect very little from the BJP-Sena government. But it is our duty to keep the issue alive. We do not want violence. But I must say that people are angry,” he said.
It was the report prepared by his father, when he was the Industries Minister in the previous government, which recommended reservation for the Maratha community in the education and job sectors, without infringing on the seats reserved for the Other Backward Classes (OBC). The Bombay High Court later stayed the government’s decision to extend 16 per cent reservation to Marathas in these sectors.
Purushottam Khedekar, a senior leader of the Maratha movement, said the fight of Marathas was different than that of the Jats as “we have already got reservation, only court has to approve it”. “While we support the Jats in their fight, the story in Maharashtra is different as the court is yet to give its final verdict on reservation,” he said.
Currently, the Dr Sadanand More committee is studying all aspects of the issue, particularly if Maratha is a caste or their caste is Kunbi, which falls in the backward class.
Of the 17 Chief Ministers in Maharashtra since 1960, as many as 10 have been Marathas, including YB Chavan, NCP chief Sharad Pawar, Vasantdada Patil and Vilasrao Deshmukh. Many of State’s educational institutes and sugar factories are run by Marathas.
The BJP too has been supporting the demand and had even made it a major election issue in the 2014 Assembly polls. However, it is yet to fulfil its promise.
Last week, at the Shiv Jayanti ceremony at Shivneri Fort, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis guaranteed that the issue of Maratha reservation would be solved within two to three months.
“We have recently given over 1,000 pages of proof stating that Maratha is not a caste, but the real caste is Kunbi. They should be given reservation as the community is backward,” said Pravin Gaikwad of the Sambhaji Brigade, one of the Maratha organisations spearheading the campaign. He said that the outfit was organising rallies across Maharashtra to keep the issue alive.
The Maratha community, which accounts for a third of the State’s population, traces its lineage to the warrior king Shivaji.
It is considered a “caste cluster” including both Kshatriya “warriors” and the agricultural peasantry.
The community has traditionally supported the Congress and its offshoot, the NCP. However, over time, deprived sections of this vote bank drifted to the Shiv Sena and later to the BJP.