The activist leading OBC counter-protest against Marathas: Who is Laxman Hake?

The 45-year-old Hake who is from the Dhangar community and is a teacher by profession has emerged as the face of the OBC counter-protest demanding the exclusion of Marathas from the OBC category and a probe to determine if Kunbi certificates, which enable Marathas to avail reservation benefits under the OBC category, were given to undeserving individuals.

Jarange-Patil, meanwhile, has accused Hake of protesting to give the state government an excuse not to fulfil the “just demands” of Marathas. “The government is backing these agitations to drive a wedge between the OBCs and Marathas. We understand their game,” he said last week.

Maharashtra OBC activist Laxman Hake. (Express)

Born in a family of agricultural workers in Jujarpur village of Solapur district’s Sangola tehsil in 1979, Hake studied in a local Zilla Parishad school and later in Sangli before moving to Pune to pursue higher education. “He did not have a school bag. It was a real struggle. His parents were sugarcane cutters. He could not afford a bicycle so had to walk to school,” Hake’s aunt Sajabai Bandgar told the media last week.

Hake enrolled in Fergusson College in 2003 to pursue his Master’s degree in Marathi Literature and managed his finances by working in an “Earn and Learn” scheme. He worked in the college as a lecturer for a few years before becoming a full-time activist.

Hake forayed into politics in the late 2000s and joined Mahadev Jankar’s Rashtriya Samaj Paksha (RSP), a party focussed on the Dhangar community, and worked for it in west Maharashtra. Hake also actively participated in a movement launched to press for the inclusion of the Dhangar community into the Scheduled Tribes (STs).

In the 2014 Assembly elections, Hake actively campaigned for Peasant and Workers’ Party (PWP) candidate Ganpatrao Deshmukh, who won the Sangola Assembly seat for a record eleventh time. Five years later, he contested the Assembly polls but managed to get only 267 votes. After his defeat, citing dissatisfaction with then CM Devendra Fadnavis’ policies and the RSP’s alignment with the NDA, Hake quit the party and floated his OBC Sangharsh Sena , a social and political body. After the Shiv Sena split in 2022, Hake aligned with Uddhav Thackeray’s party but contested the recent Lok Sabha polls as an Independent from Madha but secured only 5,134 votes.

On the other hand, Waghmare, hails from Ghansawangi in Jalna and is the district president of the Mahatma Phule Samata Parishad – an OBC organisation headed by Bhujbal.

“We fasted for 10 days due to the support we got from our OBC brothers and sisters from Marathwada. The OBC community, over the last six to seven months, has suffered a lot with many leaders being targeted during the Maratha agitation. Even leaders like Pankaja Munde were defeated (in the recent polls) though she was not a part of any OBC protest. Our agitation will continue,” he said when breaking his fast alongside Bhujbal.