Journalism of Courage
Advertisement
Premium

Maratha leaders seek ‘decisive’ action from state govt to prevent flare-ups

Patil said the Maratha community is angry with what happened in Jalna.

Maratha reservation, Maratha reservation protest, Maratha reservation issue, Maharashtra, Jalna protest, indian express, political pulseMembers of Maratha Kranti Morcha held an agitation outside the Pune district collectorate Saturday. (Express Photo by Pavan Khengre)
Listen to this article Your browser does not support the audio element.

Leaders of the Maratha community opposed any plan for a state-wide bandh but called upon the government to take decisive steps to avoid any flare-up future, a day after clashes broke out in Jalna’s Antarwali Saraati village where police lathi-charged those participating in a hunger strike to press the demand for reservation for the community in education and government jobs.

Abasaheb Patil, founder of Maratha Kranti Thok Morcha–one of the organisations at the forefront of the community’s agitation for reservation, said, “At our meeting of Maratha coordinators, it was decided to leave it to representative of various districts to decide the mode of agitation…Most coordinators were against a state-wide bandh as we fear that it might take a different turn. It is difficult to control agitated youths as was experienced during the last bandh.”

Patil said the Maratha community is angry with what happened in Jalna. “We are unanimous in our view that those officials, on whose dierctions the villagers were lathicharged, should be suspended,” he said.

Rajendra Kondhare, coordinator of Maratha Kranti Morcha, said there is anger within the Maratha community following the Jalna incident. “After Supreme Court scrapped the Maratha reservation, there is frustration among youths, especially those from Marathwada. There is also a great amount of confusion among the community members. These confusions are fuelled by leaders who make misleading promises…the government should step forward and highlight what it is doing to help the community get reservation. Merely appointing a sub-committee and making promises won’t do,” he said.

Kondhare said in Marathwada, a narrative has been set that reservation will not be made available to the Maratha community.

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


Click here to join Express Pune WhatsApp channel and get a curated list of our stories
Tags:
Edition
Install the Express App for
a better experience
Featured
Trending Topics
News
Multimedia
Follow Us
46 years laterReturning to a Musahar village in Bihar, to find change, desire for more
X