Mumbai: The previous chapter of Maratha protests in 2018 saw Devendra Fadnavis, then chief minister, first facing flak from the community, but then emerging as a leader with the most political capital, by getting a quota law unanimously passed
Five years later, amid a fresh round of protests for reservation in government jobs and education, Fadnavis is now in the shadows, having lost a lot of the political capital that he had built for himself with the Maratha quota law.
Maharashtra CM Eknath Shinde, a Maratha himself, has now taken centre stage during the ongoing agitation over the issue, trying to pacify the protestors and assuring them that the state government is committed to meeting their reservation demand.
Meanwhile, Fadnavis, who also holds the state home portfolio, is battling criticism from the Opposition, first for a lathi charging of protestors in September, and now for letting the ongoing agitation get violent.
Maratha activist Manoj Jarange Patil started an indefinite fast pressing for reservation to the Maratha community in August this year. However, he called off his protest after CM Shinde personally intervened and assured to see the quota demand through. Jarange Patil had given the state government time till 24 October to act, and resumed his protest and hunger strike from 25 October. His renewed agitation soon snowballed into a full-fledged movement in many parts of the state.
On Monday, Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) MP Supriya Sule also called for Fadnavis’ resignation as state home minister.
A day later, while speaking to reporters Tuesday, Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) chief Uddhav Thackeray said, “One deputy CM forgets Maharashtra, Maratha and goes for the campaigning of a party. When your state is on fire, people have hit the streets, youth are committing suicide you still think your party’s campaign in another state is important. Can such people give justice to the society?”
Thackeray was referring to Fadnavis’s visit to poll-bound Chhatisgarh Monday, to campaign for the BJP, even as parts of Maharashtra was gripped with unrest with the Maratha protests getting violent.
CM Shinde, who is usually flanked by his two deputy CMs on each side at press conferences, was alone in Mantralaya to firefight. The other deputy CM, Ajit Pawar, is recuperating from dengue.
On Monday, Shinde chaired a meeting of the cabinet sub-committee on the Maratha reservation issue and addressed a press conference alone, trying to mollify the protestors.
After Thackeray’s barbs, the BJP hit back Monday, saying it was Thackeray who lost the state its Maratha quota, a legislation that Fadnavis had enacted.
“There would have been no need for protests if Uddhav Thackeray had not lost the Maratha quota law. Now the same Uddhav Thackeray is questioning Devendra ji on the Maratha reservation issue,” the Maharashtra BJP said on the social media platform X (previously Twitter).
The BJP was referring to the Supreme Court scrapping the Maratha quota law in 2021 when Thackeray was CM of the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government, comprising the undivided Shiv Sena, National Congress Party and Congress.
Maratha leaders, however, say that while the community is angry with Fadnavis for not being able to deliver a Maratha quota law that can be held in court, the current agitation is not necessarily anti-Fadnavis, as some of the previous protests were.
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Fadnavis and the Maratha community
In 2016, when there was a wave of silent protests by the Maratha community, Fadnavis, then CM, had promised to deliver a quota for the Maratha community that would withstand the court’s scrutiny. The previous government of the Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) had delivered a quota for the community in 2014 that was struck down by the Bombay High Court later.
In 2018, the Fadnavis-led government unanimously passed a legislation to give reservation to the Maratha community. It passed the muster of the Bombay High Court, which in 2019 upheld the quota but reduced it to 12 percent in education and 13 percent in government jobs, as against the proposed 16 percent. It was, however, struck down by the Supreme Court in 2021, by which time the Thackeray-led Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government was in power.
The state government’s review petition was dismissed earlier this year, after which it filed a curative petition in the Supreme Court.
Virendra Pawar, coordinator of the Maratha Kranti Morcha, told ThePrint that after the community’s quota demand was fulfilled, the Marathas voted heavily in favour of the BJP-Shiv Sena alliance in the 2019 Lok Sabha as well as in the Maharashtra assembly election.
“People have been angry that Fadnavis could not keep his word to give a Maratha quota that is foolproof…And then the Jalna lathi charge incident happened [in September]. How can a localised protest happening inside a village be a threat to the state?” Pawar said.
In September, the state police had lathi charged protestors from the Maratha community at Antarwali Sarati village in Jalna where community activist Manoj Jarange Patil had sat on an indefinite fast.
After much criticism, Fadnavis had publicly apologised for the lathi charge. Speaking to Marathi television channel TV9 Sunday, Fadnavis said the lathi charge order was not issued by him and he was initially unaware of what had happened.
“Everyone who has been home minister knows that this kind of a decision doesn’t need to come from the top. The local officiating officer has been given these powers by law. Later when I took information about it I realised that there was no need to resort to a lathi charge after which I apologised to the community, though I directly didn’t have anything to do with the decision because as a politician one shouldn’t have any ego,” he said.
In the last round of Maratha protests in August-September this year, CM Shinde who is often criticised by the Opposition for being in Fadnavis’ shadow, took centre stage, coming into his own. Shinde is a Maratha himself, while Fadnavis belongs to the Brahmin community.
This time, political commentator Abhay Deshpande says it is perhaps the government’s deliberate strategy for Fadnavis to stay in the background and let Shinde handle the issue.
“It isn’t that Fadnavis has deliberately put the onus on Shinde. The entire anger is towards Fadnavis because everything started with the Jalna lathi charge. So, for all the discussions and negotiations, it’s better that Shinde takes the front seat,” Deshpande said.
‘Current agitation not anti-Fadnavis’
The last time that the Maratha protests had gotten violent was in 2018 when there was a “clear anti-Fadnavis tone to the agitations”, making the then CM’s Brahmin identity stand out.
Back then, Fadnavis had decided to not travel to Pandharpur to perform the annual puja on Ashadhi Ekadashi going against tradition. He had cited intelligence reports about the possibility of certain Maratha groups creating unrest at the event, and possibly creating a law and order situation. This supposed distrust of the community turned out to be a trigger.
“In the protests 2016 and 2018, there was a definite anti-Fadnavis tone. But this time, the nature of the movement and the violence is more targeted towards Maratha community politicians,” Rajendra Kondhare, a leader of the Maratha Kranti Morcha, told ThePrint.
The leaders whose houses and offices were attacked belong to the Maratha community, Kondhare said. On Monday, protestors pelted stones and torched vehicles at the residence of NCP MLA Prakash Solanke, who belongs to the Ajit Pawar faction [which broke away from the Sharad Pawar led party to join the Shinde government earlier this year], as well as Sandeep Kshirsagar, who belongs to the Opposition Sharad Pawar camp. The office of a BJP MLA was also vandalised.
“The major difference between the 2016-2018 protests and now is that at that time the protests were happening closer to city centres. Now they are very localised, at zilla parishad offices, tehsil offices, inside villages. The new mode of protest is gaobandi, [which means] prohibiting politicians from entering Maratha-dominated villages. This means people are more upset at their own local leaders than the leadership of the government,” Kondhare said.
(Edited by Poulomi Banerjee)
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