Protesters’ jal samadhi intensifies Maratha quota stir

Several parts of Maharashtra erupted on Monday, after by a 27-year-old youth committed suicide by jumping into a river as part of a “Jal Samadi” (watery grave) agitation undertaken by Marathas demanding reservations for their community members.

The youth, identified as one Kakasaheb Dattareya Shinde, took a plunge into the Godavari river from a bridge at Kaigaon Toke near Aurangabad. The local police took him out of the water and rushed him to the Ghati Hospital in Aurangabad, where he died during the course of treatment. 

A resident of Kannad village in Gangapur tehsil of Aurangabad district, Shinde was part of the ongoing agitation demanding reservation for Maratha community members.

Eyewitnesses said that Shinde was standing with a few more youngster on a platform next to a bridge raising slogans demanding reservations for Marathas, before jumping into the Godavari river.

Shinde’s parents and agitators supporting refused to take his body from the hospital’s morgue saying that they would not take the body unless a case was registered against chief minister Devendra Fadnavis for inciting the youth to commit suicide.

As the news of Shinde’s death spread across the state,  the pro-Maratha reservation activists went on a rampage in several parts of the state, damaging state-run buses and resorting to road blockades at several places.  The incidents of road blockades and damage to buses were reported from the Aurangabad-Ahmednagar road, Hingoli-Kalmnori highway, Hyderabad-Akola Road.

Since Tuesday last, the Marathas have been agitating in various parts of the state demanding reservations for their community members,

The Marathas are expected to intensify their agitation from Tuesday.  Among other things, agitators are planning road blockades in several parts of the state, while the Maratha community members are planning to take a mock funeral procession of 11 MLAs/ MPs in Jalna district.

It may be recalled that on August 9 last year,  more five lakh Marathas virtually laid seize to south Mumbai for nearly six hours to press for reservations and other demands. The morcha to the state headquarters was a culmination of 57 similar silent rallies that the Marathas – working under the banner of the Maratha Kranti Morcha (MKM)—had taken out earlier to various district headquarters and major towns across the state.

Though the BJP-led saffron alliance government had come out with a package for Marathas, including concessions in education along the like Other Backward Classes (OBCs) and announced its readiness to accord reservations to the community in education and government jobs, a majority of the promises made by the Devendra Fadnavis dispensation have remained on paper.

On the demand for reservations to Maratha community, the chief minister had informed a agitating Maratha delegation then that the Bombay High Court had referred the Maratjha reservations issue to the Maharashtra State Commission for Backward Classes to ascertain if the Maratha community was socially and educationally backward. the state government would submit to the Commission whatever inputs and it expected the commission to submit within a definite time-frame.

The other announcements that Fadnavis made then were: the state government would provide concessions to Maratha students along the lines of OBCs, introduce scholarships for Maratha students in 605 educational courses, extend all such student scholarships given to OBCs to Marathas, reduce the mark percentage criteria from 60 per to 50 per cent to Maratha students seeking scholarships and provide fee concessions to 10 lakh Maratha students.

Apart from extending scholarships to Maratha students under Chhatrapati Shahu Maharaj Scheme, the state government had assured the agitators that it would set aside Rs 5 crore for building hostels for Maratha students in all districts of the state, allocate Rs 200 crore to the Annasaheb Patil Arthik Vikas Mahamandal to take care of the financial needs of Marathas, provide skilled vocational training to 3 lakh children of Maratha farmers and distribute caste and sub-caste certificates to the members of 18 Maratha communities and sub-sects.