"The state government should clarify whether it would issue Kunbi certificates to all members of the concerned families (belonging to the Maratha community) as per the 1967 records," Jarange added. (PTI)
EVEN AS Chief Minister Eknath Shinde today said that a special session of the state legislature will be convened to take a decision on the Maratha reservation in February, Maratha quota activist Manoj Jarange-Patil said the government deadline was not acceptable and the community will go ahead with its agitation from December 24.
”The CM spoke about giving reservation to those whose Kunbi records before 1967 have been found. He said blood relatives of those whose records have been found will be given the benefit of reservation. The government has been 50 per cent honest, but there was no clarity on two key points,”Jarange-Patil said while reacting to Shinde’s statement in the House today.
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The activist said that from the CM’s statement it was clear that the government intended to give cent per cent reservation to Marathas. ”The government today sounded honest. It intends to grant a quota to Marathas, and their blood relatives, based on 54 lakh Kunbi records it has found. By December 24, it should grant the reservation to all Marathas. If it does not do so by December 24, we will announce our agitation that day itself,” he said.
Seeking clarification from the government, Jarange-Patil said,”The CM today said relatives of those whose Kunbi records belonging to the period before 1967 have been found will also be given reservation. But what criteria will be applied to blood relatives? On what basis will you give them reservation? Are you going to pass a law for this? How will you establish the relationship ? Are you going to put conditions, and if so, what will those conditions be? Whatever the government wishes to do, it should do before December 24.
Jarange Patil said they are not concerned about the session that the government has convened. ”The government has said it will convene a special session after the report of the State Backward Class Commission is received. We are not concerned with it. Because we believe that reservation given on the basis of the commission’s report will not stand the scrutiny of the Supreme Court. The reason is that the reservation will go beyond 50 per cent, and again Marathas will be betrayed,” he said.
Manoj More has been working with the Indian Express since 1992. For the first 16 years, he worked on the desk, edited stories, made pages, wrote special stories and handled The Indian Express edition. In 31 years of his career, he has regularly written stories on a range of topics, primarily on civic issues like state of roads, choked drains, garbage problems, inadequate transport facilities and the like. He has also written aggressively on local gondaism. He has primarily written civic stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad, Khadki, Maval and some parts of Pune. He has also covered stories from Kolhapur, Satara, Solapur, Sangli, Ahmednagar and Latur. He has had maximum impact stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad industrial city which he has covered extensively for the last three decades.
Manoj More has written over 20,000 stories. 10,000 of which are byline stories. Most of the stories pertain to civic issues and political ones. The biggest achievement of his career is getting a nearly two kilometre road done on Pune-Mumbai highway in Khadki in 2006. He wrote stories on the state of roads since 1997. In 10 years, nearly 200 two-wheeler riders had died in accidents due to the pathetic state of the road. The local cantonment board could not get the road redone as it lacked funds. The then PMC commissioner Pravin Pardeshi took the initiative, went out of his way and made the Khadki road by spending Rs 23 crore from JNNURM Funds. In the next 10 years after the road was made by the PMC, less than 10 citizens had died, effectively saving more than 100 lives.
Manoj More's campaign against tree cutting on Pune-Mumbai highway in 1999 and Pune-Nashik highway in 2004 saved 2000 trees.
During Covid, over 50 doctors were asked to pay Rs 30 lakh each for getting a job with PCMC. The PCMC administration alerted Manoj More who did a story on the subject, asking then corporators how much money they demanded....The story worked as doctors got the job without paying a single paisa.
Manoj More has also covered the "Latur drought" situation in 2015 when a "Latur water train" created quite a buzz in Maharashtra. He also covered the Malin tragedy where over 150 villagers had died.
Manoj More is on Facebook with 4.9k followers (Manoj More), on twitter manojmore91982 ... Read More
