A conference on the Maratha quota issue that was to be held in the city on Friday, under the leadership of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP Udayanraje Bhosale, was abruptly cancelled. No particular reason was given for the sudden cancellation.
Petitioners, scholars, jurists and other dignitaries were to attend the meeting scheduled at 2 p.m. at Residency Club to decide the future course of the agitation for implementing the Maratha quota in the State.
According to sources, those invited to the meeting were informed, by the BJP MP himself, that the conference had been called off.
Last month, Mr. Bhosale had said that if the Uddhav Thackeray-led State government failed to get the Maratha quota law implemented in the State, then reservation for all communities ought to be scrapped.
The MP, a direct descendant of Maratha warrior King Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, and an influential community leader from Satara district in western Maharashtra, had called for a merit-based approach instead — a suggestion which elicited a caustic response from the Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi chief, Prakash Ambedkar, who hit out at the BJP MP and called him an ‘imbecile’.
With the Supreme Court delaying the implementation of the Maratha quota in Maharashtra, students from the community considered themselves to be in a limbo and were hoping that the conference would prove to be a forum to address their pressing issues.
A section of community leaders, including Shiv Sangram leader Vinayak Mete, — a BJP ally in the State — have been urging Mr. Bhosale to take over the community’s leadership in tackling the Maratha quota imbroglio.
The storm of the Maratha agitation throughout 2018 saw Mr. Bhosale cast in the role of a possibly important mediator between the community’s interests and the then BJP government. At the time, too, Mr. Bhosale had chaired a Maratha Parishad in Pune in August 2018.
