Manoj Jarange-Patil has been at the forefront of agitations seeking reservations for the Maratha community and recently undertook an indefinite hunger strike and ended it only after Chief Minister Eknath Shinde promised to fulfil his demands. (File)
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Maratha activist Manoj Jarange-Patil, who is leading the community’s agitation for reservation, Monday warned the Maharashtra government the October 24 deadline will not be extended any further.
Earlier this month, Jarange-Patil gave the Maharashtra government 10 days to address the issue of the Maratha reservation in state jobs and admission in educational institutions during a huge public rally in the state’s Jalna district.
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During that October 14 rally, Jarange-Patil also warned that if the reservation was not implemented, he would launch another agitation across the state.
“I had first set a deadline of October 14 for deciding on the Maratha community’s demand for reservation. I had given them a full month. After that, I gave them 10 more days. Now, the deadline is October 24. After that I will not extend the deadline even by 15 minutes,” Jarange-Patil said in Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar on Monday.
“The government should get ready to face the wrath of the community if it fails to live up to its word…We will not be responsible for this. The government will have to take the responsibility,’’ Jarange-Patil said.
Jarange-Patil said when he was fasting at the Antarwali-Saraati village, it was the state government which had sought one month to take a decision on the Maratha community’s reservation demand.
”The chief minister himself had come to Antarwali-Saraati village and made the promise. On October 14, the massive rally that we had organised sent a strong message to the government to act on our demand or face the consequences. On October 22, Maratha coordinators will meet and decide the future course of action in case the government fails to keep its word on the reservation”.
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Jarange-Patil said the next agitation will be intensified which the government will find “absolutely difficult to handle”.
“I don’t do anything without consulting the Maratha community. Before deciding on the future course of agitation, I will hold a discussion with the community. And will then take the path decided by the community”.
Jarange-Patil said during the Nizam rule, the community used to get reservations.
“We want the reservation policy to be implemented. Be it in Vidarbha, Konkan, Western Maharashtra or North Maharashtra, reservation is applicable to the community. Then why are Marathas from Marathwada being denied the facility of reservation?” he asked.
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
