Mumbai: The ongoing agitation for reservation for Marathas in employment and education is quintessentially a closely-fought battle between Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and president of the NCP rump led by Sharad Pawar.
The latter is furious with Fadnavis for decimating the opposition in Maharashtra. Fadnavis first split the Shiv Sena led by Uddhav Thackeray and later turned his eyes on the NCP. The difference between the two splits is that while in the case of the Shiv Sena, Thackeray was completely taken by surprise by the scale of revolt of his MLAs, that was not the case with the NCP MLAs’ change of loyalty. Fadnavis not only divided the Shiv Sena, but in one stroke dislodged the Maha Vikas Aghadi government led by Thackeray.
Protests by the Marathas
In the case of the NCP, the so-called revolt of team Ajit Pawar took place with the full knowledge and tacit approval of Pawar, Sr. Nevertheless, the manner in which Fadnavis neatly pulled the political rug from under the chappals of Pawar made the latter furious. For once, Pawar found himself neatly outwitted and cornered by a relatively junior politician in the form of Fadnavis, who incidentally is the only state politician who has not genuflected before the NCP founder.
It is in this context that the sudden eruption of protests by the Marathas has to be viewed. The hunger strike by a little-known Maratha activist, Manoj Jarange-Patil, started around the same time as the meeting of the INDIA alliance in Mumbai’s Grand Hyatt wound up. It is a matter of debate whether the Jalna police fell prey to the moves of the protestors in Jalna or whether it knowingly exceeded the brief, fully aware of the political consequences of a brutal lathi charge.
What is significant is that the Sambhaji Brigade, which is wholly loyal to Pawar, Sr, is masterminding the protests across Maharashtra. The brigade has its network in all the districts of the state. Within a few hours of the lathi-charge, the 82-year-old Pawar met the injured people in Jalna and promptly blamed Fadnavis for the police action. He even demanded the deputy CM’s resignation.
Fadnavis’s open apology for the police violence has not assuaged feelings and the demand for his resignation persists. Strangely, nobody is blaming Ajit Pawar, who is also a deputy chief minister. That may be because he not holding the home portfolio. But the real reason could be that he is a Maratha himself, unlike Fadnavis, a Brahmin. There is a sense of deja vu to the whole development. Pawar had once ousted Sudhakarrao Naik from chief ministership.
