As pro-Maratha quota activist refuses to relent, Shinde holds all-party meet

Eknath Shinde held an all-party meeting late evening in Mumbai to break the impasse under the shadow of intensifying tensions between the Maratha and OBC communities across Maharashtra

Even as pro-Maratha quota activist Manoj Jarange Patil refused to budge from his indefinite hunger strike, Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde on Monday made it clear the State government would not take a hasty decision on the issue of Maratha reservation.

While Mr. Patil, whose indefinite hunger strike entered its fourteenth day, continued to insist that the government must issue Other Backward Castes certificates for all Marathas so that the community could avail benefits presently enjoyed by the OBCs community.

Mr. Shinde held an all-party meeting late evening in Mumbai to break the impasse under the shadow of intensifying tensions between the Maratha and OBC communities across Maharashtra.

“The State government wants to give the Maratha community a reservation that will be foolproof and one which will pass legal muster. We will not take any decision in haste. The decision cannot reduce the benefits under reservation of other classes. The State does not want to deceive any community,” Mr. Shinde said, adding that the priority would be to get quotas for the Maratha community in education and jobs.

He said the government needed to establish that the Maratha community was socially and educationally backward and also assure other communities that their quotas would remain unaffected.

Underscoring that the demand for a Maratha quota was a social issue and not a political one, Mr. Shinde appealed to all Opposition parties ahead of the meeting to avoid politicising the issue.

Besides ruling government leaders, representatives of the opposition MVA coalition – the Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena (UBT), the Indian National Congress and the Sharad Pawar-led Nationalist Congress Party faction – attended the meeting.