The Maharashtra Government on Thursday requested Maratha quota protester Manoj Jarange to withdraw his hunger strike. However, Mr. Jarange said he would continue with it till the State relaxed the condition of genealogy while providing a Kunbi caste certificate to members of the community from the Marathwada region.
The Secretary of the Maharashtra Government’s General Administration Department wrote a letter to Mr. Jarange, requesting him to withdraw the strike as the government had accepted his demand. But Mr. Jarange declined.
“Though we have not received the GR (Government Resolution) on the government’s decision yet, we learnt that it will give Kunbi caste certificates to those Marathas who have genealogy. If we have genealogy, we do not need a GR at all to get a [Kunbi caste] certificate,” he said.
Mr. Jarange was speaking at a press conference at Antarwali Sarathi in Jalna. “Kunbi caste certificates should be given to the Maratha community members from Marathwada without any discrimination. Someone from the government should come with a GR specifying it and then we will end the agitation. We are thankful to the government for starting some process at last. We are ready to walk 10 steps forward. But take the decision of giving Kunbi certificates without any discrimination and relax the condition of genealogy,” he said.
Mr. Jarange spoke a day after Chief Minister Eknath Shinde said that Kunbi caste certificates would be issued to those Marathas from the region who possessed revenue or education documents from the Nizam era which recognised them as Kunbis.
The Kunbi community is associated with agriculture and termed an Other Backward Class (OBC) in Maharashtra, with reservation in education and government jobs.
The CM had said a committee would look into the issue. “A committee has been set up and asked to submit a report within a month on how to issue Kunbi certificates to the Maratha community from Marathwada. The State government has taken this issue seriously and we are working to find an amicable solution. I have directed officials to study the Supreme Court’s verdict on the Maratha quota and recommend solutions. We need to establish that the Maratha community is backward,” Mr. Shinde told reporters.
Mr. Jarange went on a hunger strike in Jalna’s Antarwali Sarathi village on August 29, demanding reservation for the Maratha community. On September 1, police used baton charge and fired teargas shells to disperse a violent mob at the village on the Dhule-Solapur road in Ambad tehsil, about 75 km from Aurangabad.
