OBC yatra participants slam Mahayuti government for coddling Marathas

WADIGODRI/ BEED/MUMBAI: Just four kilometres away from Antarwali Sarati, the site of Maratha activist Manoj Jarange-Patil’s latest indefinite hunger strike, is Wadigodri, the village where OBC activists Laxman Hake and Nagnath Waghmare kicked off their ‘OBC Arakshan Bachav Jan Akrosh Yatra’ on Monday. The seven-day march for the ‘protection’ of the OBC quota will traverse several tehsils in three districts in Maragawada in the first phase.

On the first day of the yatra, activists called chief minister Eknath Shinde biased and casteist and asked him to clarify how the OBC reservation quota would not be affected by bringing Marathas under its umbrella. They also slammed the opposition for not clarifying its stand on the issue. Hake and Waghmare were on an indefinite strike last month and withdrew it only after a state government delegation assured them that it would discuss the reservation issue at an all-party meeting.

The yatra began with participants paying their respects at the Mandal Plaque (mandal stambh) at Wadigodri. From there they moved on to other villages, including Georai, Baug Pimpalgaon, Shahagad and Umapur, to culminate in a rally in Chaklamba in Beed. The yatra and rallies will be held in several other villages and tehsils over the next seven days in Beed, Parbhani and Ahmednagar.

Hake, after kicking off the yatra, lambasted the government for coddling Marathas and “ignoring” OBCs. “BJP leader Pravin Darekar on Sunday said that the government had spent ₹4,500 on various cash benefit schemes for Marathas,” he said. “Why is this public money being spent on them when other communities, including OBCs, do not get their share? Who gave the cabinet the right to divert the social welfare funds of other communities to Marathas? We demand a white paper on this.”

Hake brought up the controversial sage-soyare notification to issue Kunbi certificates to all Marathas, calling it unconstitutional and illegal. “OBCs are asked to gather documents from the 1960s for a caste certificate while Marathas are given Kunbi certificates on a platter,” he said, adding that the sage soyare notification would affect not just OBC reservation but also that of the SC/STs.

Hake did not spare the opposition either on its alleged lack of response. “There is social unrest in the state for eight months but NCP founder Sharad Pawar has not reacted even after OBC leader Chhagan Bhujbal met him with a request to intervene,” he said. “On the contrary, he has been talking the language of Jarange-Patil, who says Marathas and Dhangars are the same. Even Shiv Sena (UBT) chief Uddhav Thackeray and state Congress leaders need to come clean on their stand on OBC reservation.”

The OBC activist also castigated Jarange-Patil for his statement that Marathas had been deprived of their rights for 70 years because of OBC reservation. “OBC reservation came into existence in the early 1990s, and that too is just a 1% budgetary allocation. Jarange-Patil has been mollycoddled by the state government and the CM. Actually, the state government should launch the Ladka Andolak (favourite activist) scheme on the lines of its other schemes for him,” he quipped.

Waghmare, in the rally held at Chaklamba, questioned why the area (Georai) had only Maratha MLAs for years. “The time has come to oppose Marathas,” he said. “OBCs should stop going to the sugar factories headed by Marathas and go to other states for cane-cutting. Marathas want OBC reservation as they are eyeing the political quota.”

Waghmare also castigated former BJP MP Sambhajiraje Chhatrapati who was in the forefront of “targeting Muslims by participating in the demolition of the structures at Vishalgad”. “He doesn’t deserve our respect,” he said. “He should not be called ‘Raje’.”