BJP leader Pankja Munde and her cousin Maharashtra Minister Dhananjay Munde meet activists protesting for protection of the OBC quota, at Wadigodri in Jalna district.
Credit: PTI Photo
Mumbai: As the hunger strike by OBC community leaders - Prof Laxman Hake and Navnath Waghmare entered the eighth day, a new delegation of the Maharashtra government is expected to meet them on Friday.
On Thursday, Leader of the Opposition in the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly Vijay Wadettiwar of the Congress and Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi founder-President Prakash Ambedkar met him at at the protest site off Datta Mandir at Wadigodri village in Ambad tehsil of Jalna district.
From the protest site, an emotional Wadettiwar, who is a senior OBC leader, dialled Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde on his mobile phone and spoke to him.
Shinde assured that on Friday a government team would meet the agitators.
Prof Hake, former member of Maharashtra State Backward Classes Commission and Waghmare, the president of Samata Parishad’s Jalna unit, have been on hunger strike since 13 June.
Before Prof Hake launched his agitation, he said: “We are committed to continue with our protest until we are given a written assurance by the state government assuring that our existing 29 per cent OBC reservation will remain intact”.
It may be mentioned that OBC leaders including state’s Food, Civil Supplies and Consumer Protection Minister Chhagan Bhujbal and Wadettiwar had been opposing dilution of OBC quota.
In February, the Maharashtra State Reservation for Socially and Educationally Backward Bill, 2024, was passed in the state legislature, paving the way for 10 per cent reservation.
Last year, the government, in a parallel exercise, had also searched for Kunbi-Maratha and Maratha-Kunbi records and as per Jarange-Patil’s claims 57 lakh records have been found. Kunbis form a sub-caste of the Maratha and covered under OBCs - and thus the certificates would enable them to get reservation in jobs and education.
However, Jarange-Patil’s demand is to declare the Marathas as Kunbis and grant separate quotas from the OBCs, plus the formal notification of the ‘sage-soyare’, a Marathi term for ‘relatives from the family tree', which widened the scope of the quota.