Mumbai: Countering the sixth hunger-strike being undertaken by Maratha reservation campaigner Manoj Jarange-Patil, the OBC resistance group led by Prof Laxman Hake on Monday launched a state-wide march so that the existing quota system is not diluted.
From Saturday, Jarange-Patil, launched his sixth hunger strike from Antarwali Sarathi village in Ambad tehsil in Jalna district demanding the implementation of reservation of Marathas as Kunbis, a sub-caste covered under OBC and the the formal notification of the ‘sage-soyare’, a Marathi term for ‘relatives from the family tree', which widens the scope of the quota.
From Monday, Hake, Navnath Waghmare and their team commenced the Arakshan Bachao OBC Jan Akrosh Yatra from Ambad in Jalna district which would pass through Beed, Ahmednagar, Parbhani, Hingoli, Washim, and Buldhana among other places of Marathwada.
The two parallel protests come just ahead of Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi founder-President Prakash Ambedkar’s ‘Arakshan Bachao Yatra’, which is expected to start from 25 July from Mumbai and move to Pune and Kolhapur.
Tension has been brewing up between the Maratha and OBC communities over the past few months and its impact was visible in the results of the Lok Sabha polls in Maharashtra.
Prof Hake said that including Kunbis under OBCs and giving access to reservation would amount to dilution of the existing quota. “As far as sage-soyare is concerned, it is not there in any Constitution,” he said.
Jarange-Patil and Prof Hake have been at loggerheads over the reservation issue.
“Through our agitation, we are conveying our feelings to the government that Kunbi OBC reservation coupled with sage-soyare implementation would severely impact the OBC quota,” said Prof Hake.
Published 22 July 2024, 11:17 IST