Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis. (File Image)
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Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis Sunday said the government has taken into consideration the demand of the Maratha communityfor Kunbi as well as Maratha caste certificates.
”Those who are Kunbi cannot be denied their status. Even if they have not been Kunbi for four generations, we cannot deny their Kunbi status. The community has pointed out that in old Nizam records, they are all Kunbis. To collect this record, we have set up the Justice Shinde committee. The committee will submit its report and then the chief minister will take a decision,” Fadnavis said during an interview to a Marathi news channel.
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Maratha quota activist Manoj Jarange-Patil, who began another round of hunger strike a few days ago, has been consistently raising the demand for Kunbi caste certificates for the entire Maratha community. However, a section of Maratha Kranti Morcha has demanded that they be given the Maratha caste certificate in the Other Backward Classes (OBC) category and not Kunbi.
Stating that the Maratha reservation was a complex issue, Fadnavis said, ”We want to ensure that we provide reservations which stand the court’s scrutiny. If we hurriedly give a reservation and then it is stayed in the court, then we will be accused of cheating. That is why Chief Minister Eknath Shinde set up the committee to search the records related to the Maratha community. The committee has already found some record, and if the committee finds an appropriate record, then future course of action can be taken.”
Fadnavis said the Maratha community is also demanding reservation as Marathas. ”The chief minister is taking action on this demand as well. We have filed a curative petition in the Supreme Court in this connection. And therefore, we are making efforts for Maratha reservation from whichever way possible,” he said.
Fadnavis said giving Maratha people reservation was the top priority for the state government. ”Ensuring reservation to the Maratha community is our top priority and commitment…We want to ensure that the reservation that we provide passes the legal test,” he said.
Meanwhile, following an appeal from Manoj Jarange-Patil, the Maratha community in Maharashtra has started hunger strikes in different villages. Jarange-Patil has asked the community members to hold fast unto death at the village level and not allow politicians to move around in their areas.
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.
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