Marathas call off stir; after Maharashtra government concedes demand

Navi Mumbai: The Maharashtra government has conceded all the major demands of the Maratha community, after which the community agitation was called off, here early on Saturday. The Shiv Sanghatana leader Manoj Jarange-Patil and the government delegation held detailed discussions around midnight which were successful.

Later, the government issued an official notification Government Resolution (GR), a copy of which was handed over to Jarange-Patil around 2 a.m. Thereafter he consulted his team and a battery of legal experts on various aspects and then decided to call off the agitation.

A weary but beaming Jarange-Patil told the media early today that the “Chief Minister Eknath Shinde has done a good job”. In a reciprocal gesture, Shinde went to Navi Mumbai and offered a glass of fruit juice to Jarange-Patil, symbolising the end of his three-day hunger strike - making it the third time in six months that the Shivba Sanghatana leader has called off his fasts at the chief minister’s behest.

On Jarange-Patil’s prime demand of including blood relations (‘Sage-Soyare’) for quotas, the draft rules in the GR states that it would include relatives of the applicant’s father, grandfather, great grandfather and in earlier generations forming out of marriages within the same caste, and include relations forming out of marriages within the same caste. (IANS)

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