ON AUGUST 29, Maratha leader Manoj Jarange Patil marched into Mumbai with tens of thousands of supporters and began a fast-unto-death at Azad Maidan. It was his eighth such fast for Maratha reservation, and this time he declared that he would not return without it.
Within days, the city ground to a halt. Nearly 30,000 protesters poured into South Mumbai in thousands of vehicles, choking traffic, occupying public spaces, and even spilling into the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus. The Bombay High Court rebuked the agitation for violating conditions and paralysing the city, calling Jarange Patil’s earlier assurances “lip service”. Judges complained that even their cars had been blocked. By the fifth day, Jarange Patil had stopped drinking water, vowing not to leave Mumbai “even if I die”.
The government, caught between a restless Maratha community and its core OBC vote bank that was against ceding to the protesters’ demands, scrambled for a solution. On September 3, the sixth day of the agitation, a cabinet subcommittee formed to look into the issue decided to accept six of Jarange Patil’s eight demands, prompting him to end his fast. The accepted demands included recognition of the Hyderabad Gazetteer as the primary historical document for Marathas in Marathwada region to claim OBC status, withdrawal of all cases against Maratha activists, compensation and government jobs for the kin of those who died during the protests, and cancellation of fines imposed on vehicles used by the protesters.
Two demands remain pending: implementation of Satara, Pune and Aundh gazetteers—on which the government has sought a month’s time—and recognition of Marathas and Kunbis as the same caste, for which the government has asked two months to study the legal aspects.
Jarange Patil declared victory before a huge crowd soon after the decisions were conveyed to him by Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil, BJP leader and minister. “Jinklo re, raje ho (We have won thanks to your support),” he said, urging supporters to disperse peacefully.
Throughout this episode, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis projected a message: “Where there is a will, there is a way.” Soon after the protest ended, posters reading “Thank You Deva Bhau” were put up across the state by his supporters as well as many Marathas.
Fadnavis’s approach was marked by calm and patience, even when he was facing personal attacks and relentless trolling from sections of the Maratha community. Jarange Patil himself once branded him the “biggest liar”, but Fadnavis did not respond. Instead, he made sure that the initiative of solving the issue remained with the BJP rather than slipping into the hands of his allies—the Shiv Sena and the Nationalist Congress Party, led by Deputy Chief Ministers Eknath Shinde and Ajit Pawar, respectively. He gave the reins of the negotiations to Vikhe Patil, a trusted ally and member of an influential Maratha family from Ahilyanagar, and included Shivendra Raje Bhosale—the 14th descendent of Shivaji—on the cabinet subcommittee. Other members included Manikrao Kokate (NCP) and Uday Samant (Shiv Sena).
Fadnavis, Shinde and Pawar held two meetings with the subcommittee. Vikhe Patil was told to explain to Jarange Patil that OBC status could not be granted to the entire Maratha community, and that the word sarsakat (“all at once”) would have to be dropped. When Jarange Patil relented on this point on September 2, the door to a settlement opened. From then on, Vikhe Patil’s official residence, Royal Stone bungalow, became the hub of government action to end the agitation. Vikhe Patil held around five meetings with the subcommittee and legal experts, scrutinising each demand to find a legally tenable solution.
It was agreed that the Hyderabad Gazetteer would be accepted as a valid base document, since Marathwada was a part of the Nizam’s state before independence. To speed up verification and the scrutiny of claims, a three-member, village-level panel—comprising revenue officer, gram panchayat officer, and assistant agriculture officer—would assess applications. (Earlier, such cases were handled by the tehsil office.) Thus, a Maratha farmer from Marathwada can submit an affidavit citing an ancestor’s name as Kunbi in the Hyderabad Gazetteer, or use a relative’s Kunbi certificate to secure OBC status.
Once Fadnavis gave the go-ahead, a government resolution was issued and kept ready. Other resolutions, too, were readied after Fadnavis held four meetings with Advocate General Birendra Saraf and Vikhe Patil to ensure that the solution that the subcommittee discussed with Jarange Patil were all legally acceptable. He also made sure that Jarange Patil alone held a series of discussions with the subcommittee. Fadnavis maintained a facade of normalcy throughout the process—attending Ganesh pandals, signing investment agreements, and quietly micromanaging negotiations through Vikhe Patil.
Fadnavis also asked Shivendra Raje Bhosale, being from the Satara royal family, to personally assure Jarange Patil of a month’s timeline to look into the issue of whether the Satara Gazetteer—which classifies Marathas as Kunbi-Marathas—can be considered a valid base document. When Raje delivered the message, Jarange Patil said, “Raje, we trust you.”
Notably, Shinde and Pawar kept a distance all through the crisis. Shinde went to his native Dare, while Pawar went to Pune. They came only when Fadnavis called a top-level meeting with Vikhe Patil’s subcommittee.
The government decision has made OBC groups unhappy. They view it as a backdoor entry for Marathas into the OBC quota. Chhagan Bhujbal, senior OBC leader and minister, said they would study all government resolutions before holding a meeting for launching a statewide agitation.
Fadnavis may have emerged a hero for now, but if the OBCs mobilise, he would face a far tougher challenge. The OBCs have been a core BJP constituency, and antagonising them could prove costly in the upcoming municipal and district polls. Perhaps that is why Fadnavis is insisting that giving blanket reservation to Marathas is impossible. “There are High Court and Supreme Court decisions against it,” he said. “Also reservation cannot be applied to an entire community; one has to apply for it.”
THE MARATHA reservation issue has a long history.
The Marathas have traditionally been ruling elites in Maharashtra’s society, constituting nearly 30 per cent of the state’s population. Even before Shivaji’s ascent to power, all nobles employed by the Mughals and the sultanates that preceded them were Marathas. Before independence, Patils and Deshmukhs—clans that were a part of the Maratha fold—headed thousands of villages. Even now, the community continues to dominate the social ladder in rural Maharashtra.
Unrest in the community began as population growth resulted in shrunken farm holdings. Unresolved problems in the agriculture sector added to their woes.
The demand for Maratha reservation in jobs and education was first raised four decades ago. But successive chief ministers, all of them upper-class Marathas, continued to ignore it—until Prithviraj Chavan, in 2012, appointed a committee headed by minister Narayan Rane of the Congress to look into the issue. The Rane committee’s report recommended a 16 per cent quota for the Marathas in jobs and education.
Chavan’s government was defeated in the assembly polls two years later. The BJP came to power and Fadnavis became chief minister. He granted reservation to the community, and the decision was upheld by the Bombay High Court. The Supreme Court, however, struck it down, saying quotas cannot breach the 50 per cent cap it had set earlier. At the time of the Supreme Court judgment, the Maha Vikas Aghadi government led by Uddhav Thackeray of the Shiv Sena was in power. The current Fadnavis government blames the MVA government for failing to take adequate steps to protect Maratha reservation.
Throughout Jarange Patil’s agitation, Fadnavis had been insisting on a solution within the legal framework. “Just to make someone happy, the government cannot take decisions that will not stand legally,” he said.
A section of BJP leaders felt that Jarange Patil was targeting Fadnavis because he was a Brahmin. Also, Fadnavis was deputy chief minister handling the home portfolio when Jarange Patil’s first big rally in Antarwali Sarati in Jalna district in 2023 was crushed by the police. A section in the BJP had then criticised Shinde, then chief minister, for “pampering” Jarange Patil instead of dealing with him firmly. “We don’t know for sure how much of the agitation is for reservation, and how much of it is against Fadnavis,” said a BJP leader. “Jarange Patil is not saying a word against Shinde or Pawar. He is only targeting the CM, when the fact is that whatever reservation the Marathas have had was given by Fadnavis.”
A senior BJP leader said the party did not want the OBC quota of 27 per cent to be affected by its Maratha reservation decision. This means Fadnavis will have to do another fine balancing act to find a solution that would keep both the OBCs and the Marathas happy. “This cannot be done overnight,” said the BJP leader. Bhujbal has already warned that lakhs of OBC group members would march to Mumbai if Marathas are included in the OBC quota.
Fadnavis, perhaps, can take a cue from a statement he made when he was opposition leader: “Where there is will, there is a way. Where there is no will, there are committees, commissions and reports.”