The Maratha community has once again established its dominance in Maharashtra, Jarange-Patil said.
Maratha activist Manoj Jarange-Patil once again targeted Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, alleging that the BJP leader was hatching a conspiracy to eliminate him by poisoning him through saline or in a police encounter.
”The government wants me to die while I am on hunger strike…It is Devendra Fadnavis who is tryring to defame me….He is consipiring to eliminate me by poisoning me through saline. That is why I have stopped taking IV fluids. Fadnavis is thinking of eliminating me either by administering poison in saline or in a police encounter,” Jarange-Patil told reporters on Sunday afternoon in Antarwali-Saraati village of Jalna, where he has been fasting for the last 10 days.
Stating that the Maratha community has once again established its dominance in Maharashtra and that the Deputy Chief Minister is working overtime to defeat the community, Jarange-Patil said, “Fadnavis wants to end this supremacy of Marathas. He is trying to do this by pitting one Maratha against the other. In this conspiracy, three MLAs belonging to Chief Minister Eknath Shinde, two belonging to Ajit Pawar’s NCP and two from BJP are involved.”
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The Maratha activist said he never demanded a separate 10 per cent reservation. ”I have been insisting that Maratha community should get reservation under the OBC category. But the government has forcibly granted 10 per cent reservation to Marathas,” he said.
Jarange-Patil alleged that Union Minister Narayan Rane has taken away some of his associates from Beed and Jalna district. ”Through them, they are trying to defame me…It is Devendra Fadnavis who is behind this conspirancy. If Fadnavis wants it, he can get the ”sage-soyare” law implemented in no time but he has no interest in doing so as he is busy hatching a conspiracy against me,” he said.
”Fadnavis thinks he is a Brahmin and therefore, he can defeat Marathas. Till date, I have never addressed him on the basis of his caste. If a person does not listen to him, he goes to the extent of finishing him off. He hates people making progress and going ahead of him. He does not like any caste making progress. He admires those who become his slaves,” said the activist.
Citing names of leaders who were allegedly humiliated by Fadnavis, Jarange-Patil said, ”Eknath Khadse was forced to quit BJP. Vinod Tawade was pushed to Delhi. Pankaja Munde is feeling suffocated in BJP. Those who would never imagine leaving BJP had to quit the party because of Fadnavis.”
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Citing the case of NCP leaders, Jarange-Patil said, ”Ajit Pawar would never have divided NCP. but he and Praful Patel were threatened with jail term. They chose the option of going with BJP to avoid going to jail.”
After speaking to reporters in the afternoon, Jarange-Patil started heading towards Mumbai in his vehicle. High drama ensued as villagers pleaded him not to leave Antarwali-Saraati. However, Jarange-Patil travelled a short distance before members of Maratha community halted him in a nearby village and urged him to first take care of his health before going to Mumbai.
“I am ready to go to Sagar Bungalow where the Deputy Chief Minister lives…If he wants to eliminate me, then he should go ahead and do it…I am not going to compromise with the bond that I have with my community. The Maratha community wants reservation under the OBC category and it will get it under any circumstances. We don’t want the 10 per cent 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
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