“The government is intended to benefit 100-150 people but it will be of no use to crores of Maratha community members," quota activist Manoj Jarange-Patil said. (Express file photo by Arul Horizon)
After the state government passed a bill giving 10 per cent reservation in jobs and educational institutions to the Maratha community on Tuesday, activist Manoj Jarange-Patil said the move “is not acceptable to us”.
Earlier in the day, the Maharashtra Assembly unanimously passed the Maharashtra State Socially and Educationally Backward Bill, 2024, which aims to grant a 10 per cent reservation for the Maratha community in education and government jobs. After its passage in the Assembly, the Maharashtra Legislative Council also gave its approval. The bill will become law after the Maharashtra Governor’s assent.
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While speaking to reporters after the passage of the Maratha quota bill, Jarange-Patil said, “This is not acceptable to us. We have been demanding that we should be given a quota in the OBC category. But the government has given us separate reservation which crosses the 50 per cent ceiling. This will not stand the test of law”.
“The government move is intended to benefit 100-150 people but it will be of no use to crores of Maratha community members… We want a reservation which is rightfully ours. We will decide our future course of agitation after speaking to the community members tomorrow,” said Jarange-Patil, who is already on a hunger strike at the Antarwali-Saraati village in Jalna district.
The Maratha activist said he had earlier welcomed the move by Chief Minister Eknath Shinde when he had headed for Mumbai on January 26.
“Though we welcomed the reservation meant for a handful of Marathas, but crores of Marathas want reservation in a separate OBC category. I have been demanding that those Marathas whose Kunbi records have not been found should get reservations by converting the gazette notification relating to ‘sage-soyare’ (relatives from a family) into a law. We will relaunch our agitation…We will not stop till we get the reservation,” 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
