Mumbai, Sep 5 (IANS) Shiv Sena(UBT) has showered praise on Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis for successfully handling the five-day protest by pro-Maratha quota activist Manoj Jarange-Patil demanding reservation to the Maratha community from the OBC quota.

The credit also goes to Jarange-Patil, reaching an agreement with the state government after tough negotiations and ending his fast.

The Thackeray camp in the party’s mouthpiece ‘Saamana’, said, “The credit for the Maratha reservation struggle goes to the Chief Minister of the state as much as to Jarange-Patil. The Chief Minister has found a solution, and the agitation has come to a sweet end.”

Shiv Sena(UBT)’s move to heap praise on CM Fadnavis has sparked a buzz in the state political circle, especially when the former has been targeting the CM on a number of issues.

“The Jarange-Patil came to Mumbai and staged a hunger strike and protest on the issue of Maratha reservation. He has been successful in his fight. On the other hand, CM Fadnavis handled the Maratha agitation in a restrained manner. It has to be admitted that the chief minister did not waver even when he was being showered with insults from all sides, and in the end, he accepted all the demands that were possible for the government to act upon, paving the way for Jarange-Patil and thousands of his supporters to return to their villages,” said the editorial.

“Jarange-Patil risked his life for the Maratha reservation. Jarange-Patil is certainly a good man. If he had not taken the tough stand, the Maratha community would not have achieved anything. Therefore, the credit of Jarange-Patil in this fight is valuable, but it is also of the chief minister who found the solution and resolved the stalemate,” it said.

The party said in Saamana, “After the High Court gave Jarange-Patil a deadline to leave Mumbai, no one was left with anything. If Jarange-Patil’s supporters had tried to resist, it would have been a contempt of the High Court, and another legal mess would have been created. Therefore, CM Fadnavis rushed in and accepted most of the demands of the protesters. The Chief Minister is ultimately the government. No matter how powerful the ministers are, the government runs on his orders.”

Thackeray camp has further commented that this does not mean that people like Dy CMs Eknath Shinde and Ajit Pawar should be underestimated. “However, while terming Dy CM Shinde a good person, Jarange-Patal earlier had also used extremely inflammatory words for CM Fadnavis. In all these cases, the chief minister became the target of criticism and the bad people became ‘good’. This is incomprehensible.”

Uddhav Thackeray’s party mouthpiece explained that Maratha Reservation is a demand for reservation in education and government jobs for the Maratha community in Maharashtra as Socially and Educationally Backward Classes (SEBC). The main objective of this movement is to include the Maratha community in the OBC category or to give it a separate quota. The demand for Maratha reservation was first raised by the late Annasaheb Patil in the 1980s. The first march was held in Mumbai in 1982. The movement started at the local level in 1997 and was supported by Sharad Pawar and Vilasrao Deshmukh in 2008-09.

According to the Thackeray camp, most families in the Maratha community are dependent on agriculture, and the need for reservation is due to economic backwardness and the high rate of farmer suicides (94 per cent of Maratha farmers). The pro-Maratha quota activists have cited under-representation of the Maratha community in education and government jobs, saying that lack of development in Marathwada and Vidarbha has left youth with few options other than government jobs.

–IANS

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