EVEN as the five-day fast of quota activist Manoj Jarange-Patil ended on Monday with the government accepting his demands, Opposition parties and even Maratha activists remained cautious about articulating their views. Some political leaders said they needed to study what transpired between the government and the activist before they can express their views.
“It is good that the fast launched by the activist has finally ended… We welcome the government decision to accept the demands of the activist Everyone made efforts and though late, the government has finally acted. I will speak about it later,” Baramati MP Supriya Sule told this paper.
Congress MLC Satej Patil, who is also the party’s group leader in the Maharashtra Legislative Council, said, “The government has decided to implement the Hyderabad and Satara gazettes. I will have to study the government resolution issued in this regard. And then make any appropriate comment.”
Welcoming the end to the agitation on Tuesday, Satej Patil said, “It seemed that the Devendra Fadnavis-led state government was for last four-five days not serious about resolving the Maratha community’s concerns and was intentionally creating chaos in Mumbai for political gain.
“It seemed the Devendra Fadnavis-led Mahayuti government was bent on creating chaos in Mumbai. The government was trying to defame the agitators… The government was making no serious attempt to resolve the issue when they have the power to do so… Until they suddenly woke up today,” Patil, who is also part of the Congress’s national political affairs committee, said.
Patil said Jarange had given a three month notice ahead of his agitation which was launched on August 29. “The government had three months, but did nothing on the reservation front. It was fast asleep for three months. It knew the Ganesh festival would be from August-end to September. Why didn’t the government anticipate (the current situation)? Is it not the Intelligence Bureau’s failure that they had no clue that so many Marathas were planning to come to Mumbai,” he asked.
“The government could have started discussions a month later… They could have gone to Jalna rather than waiting for agitators to land in Mumbai… In short, the government does not intend to resolve the issue, but wants to deliberately create chaos in Mumbai and defame the agitation,” the MLC added.
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Patil said that if the government was serious about finding a solution to the reservation demand of the Marathas, it should immediately issued an ordinance. “It is now a well-established fact that a majority of the Maratha community population is living in a pitiable condition. This has been proved by several reports submitted to the government in this connection,” he stated.
“Therefore, the government should provide reservation to the poor Marathas. The Central Government has the power to issue an ordinance within 24 hours. It is the Centre which can carry out a Constitutional amendment and take reservation beyond 50 per cent as done in Tamil Nadu,” he said.
Patil questioned what stopped other ministers from engaging Jarange in a dialogue if the CM or Deputy Chief Ministers could not meet the activist.
“Last year, the government was sending ministerial delegations to Jalna… Now what is stopping them from engaging the activist when he is in Mumbai and near their doorstep?”
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Aba Patil of Maratha Kranti Morcha said,”We will have to see how the Hyderabad and Satara gazettes are implemented since a decision has been taken to implement in this regard. There is still no clarity as to how the gazettes will be implemented. But it is true that some people will benefit. But as far as my understanding goes, it involves a long government process before a large chunk of Maratha population will benefit from the government decision.”
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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