The Maratha community has been demanding reservations in government jobs and education for a long time, and this rally is part of their renewed efforts to make sure that the government takes notice. Last year, Jarange’s hunger strikes and protests had brought the protest back, but had also resulted in agitation leading to acts of violence, suicides, and the resignation of legislators. During the previous multiple hunger strikes by held Jarange, the state government had given him assurances that the state government will be taking a decision on providing reservation to the Marathas soon.

As per a report in Scroll, in the month of December 2023, Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde had announced that a special session of the state Assembly would be held in February to pass legislation to extend reservations to the Maratha community.

The order of the Bombay High Court

The aforementioned order had been issued by the division bench of Justices AS Gadkari and Shyam Chandak while hearing a plea that had been moved by one Gunratan Sadavarte. Through the said plea, the petitioners urged the court to restrain Jarange’s march to enter Mumbai citing law and order problems. However, the divisive bench opined that the state government has the power to take action to ensure there no situation related to maintenance of law and order in the city arises and that the city roads are not blocked due to the march.

With this, The Bombay High Court recorded the Maharashtra Government’s statement asserting that all necessary measures will be taken to prevent the blockage of public roads or inconvenience to commuters during the Maratha Reservation protests.

In the order, the bench noted that “He (counsel for state) submitted that the State will take all necessary measures to prevent blockage of public way/ways, which may cause inconvenience to the commuters due to the said agitation by Respondent No.9.” (Para 2)

It is also pertinent to note that the State informed the court that so far, no permission has been taken for protest at a particular place. This is in contrast to the media report which have stated that Jarange will be holding the protest at Azad Maidan until the government grants the reservation. AG Birendra Saraf on instructions submitted that the State will follow the legal position enunciated by the Supreme Court in the case of Amit Sahni vs Commissioner of Police.

In the said case, which concerned the protest of Shaheen Bagh in opposition to the Citizenship Amendment Act, in Paras 17, 18, 19 and 21 of the judgment, the Supreme Court had dealt with occupation of public ways and the duty of the State to keep public areas free from encroachments or obstructions. The court also addressed the limits of the right to protest as a fundamental right while barring indefinite occupation as a manner of peaceful protest.

Referring to the same, the Court held that “That, if deem necessary, the State may make an endeavour to allot appropriate designated place(s) to Respondent No.9 in Criminal Writ Petition No.188 of 2024 for conducting peaceful agitation. That, if need arises the State will adopt necessary measures to avoid breach of public peace and to maintain law and order situation.” (Para 2)

Issuing a notice to activist Jarange, the bench posted the matter for hearing on February 14.

The court said, “Issue notice to respondent 9 (Jarange Patil), to be served through the senior police inspector of the Azad Maidan police station.”

The complete order can be read here:

The Maratha Aarakshan Morcha till now:

The main demand that has been raised by Maratha reservation activist Jarangeis regarding the inclusion of all Marathas under the Other Backward Classes category based on their identification as Kunbis. It is crucial to highlight that Kunbis, a Maratha sub-caste, are members of a largely agrarian community with small land holdings and low incomes, spread across Maharashtra, Karnataka, Goa, Kerala and Andhra Pradesh.

As per a report of the Indian Express, activist Jarange spoke about the reason behind this morcha to be the false promises being made by the state government. Jarange stated “The government gave us the word but is not keeping it. We gave seven months’ time to the government, but it failed to meet our demand. The government claims that it has found lakhs of Kunbi records but is doing nothing to issue caste certificates.”

As per the report, Jarange further added that “The government has said that it will bring in a law for reservation but has done nothing. The OBC community is not asked to produce any records but the government wants Kunbi records from the Maratha community.”

The rally had begun on January 20 with over one lakh. Yesterday, on January 24, the said morcha had reached Pune and had allegedly disrupted the traffic in several key areas of Pune as Jarange and his supporters marched down the Pune-Ahmednagar Road. As per a report of Indian Express, the Maratha activist reached the outskirts of Mumbai at Panvel on Thursday (today) afternoon with his supporters.

The report in IE also provides the schedule for the morcha on Republic Day after entering Mumbai. As per the report, on the morning of Republic Day, Jarange will travel to Chembur where he will garland the state of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj and will start the roadshow towards Dadar. “He will travel to Azad maidan at south Mumbai from Dadar via Byculla,” said Virendra Pawar, one of the key coordinators of the protest march as per the report. Pawar also stated that they were yet to get police permission for the same.

Related:

Supreme court strikes down Maratha quota law, says its unconstitutional

What Lies Behind the Ire of the Marathas

Economic Rights within a Caste Struggle: Vishal Kadam on the Maratha Upsurge

The post Bombay HC refuses to prohibit Maratha reservation activist Manoj Jarange Patil’s protest in Mumbai on republic day appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The protests across Maharashtra, which are drawing lakhs of people, are silent. But they aren't leaderless.

Image credit:  Mridula Chari

Prajakta Sankpal’s voice rang out through the bustling hall in the heart of Kolhapur last week, cutting through the commotion of people entering and leaving, holding private conversations.

“Chhatrapati Shahu Maharaj was the one who gave our country the idea of reservations and at that time, all Marathas were included in it,” she thundered in Marathi to a ring of middle-aged and elderly men seated around her. “But when we got independence, Marathas were not included in that list. We need to ask why this injustice was done.”

Sankpal, 20, was auditioning, if a little late. Five young women were to deliver speeches at the Maratha Kranti Morcha scheduled for the next day, as Marathas across Kolhapur district gathered to silently hand over a set of demands to the district collector. The organisers had finished selecting the five speakers some days ago. The youngest of them was five years old. Their photographs had even appeared in local newspapers.

“I read about this only yesterday morning, which is why I came so late,” Sankpal admitted after her performance was over. “The organisers were kind enough to listen to me, but they said that I was too late. Maybe I will get a chance to speak in Mumbai instead.”

Sankpal has been delivering speeches since she was in school, which explains how her declamation slipped so easily into the cadence of political speeches. Caught up with her engineering studies, she had missed the excitement building around the impending rally. But she was not so far removed from events. As a result, her script – which she had hastily written the previous morning – converged almost entirely with the rhetoric that surrounded the rally.

This was an energetic propaganda machine was working itself to its final conclusion.

Prajakta Sankpal. Photo credit: Mridula Chari

Entering the rally

The Maratha Kranti Morcha that took place on October 15 in Kolhapur was the largest rally of a series of similar demonstrations that have been organised in districts across Maharashtra since August 9.

These marches all share certain features. They are all silent: no slogans are raised, no political leaders are visibly involved and there is no visible face leading the rallies. All the rallies end with vehement speeches delivered by young women and then the national anthem. Protestors are discouraged from cheering. The protestors are demanding reservations in educational institutions and government jobs, the dilution of the SC and ST (Prevention of Atrocity) Act of 1989 that penalises people who abuse Dalits and Adivasis, and relief for farmers burdened with heavy input costs and loans.

Most of these Maratha rallies have attracted anywhere between two lakh and five lakh people, most of them from the district in which the event was held. But the one in Kolhapur, which is the seat of a branch of descendants of the famous Maratha ruler Shivaji, is estimated to have drawn around 40 lakh participants, according to organiser estimates. To put this in perspective, it must be noted that the official population of Kolhapur city is just 5.4 lakh.

The nerve centre for the rally was the two-storied Shivaji Tarun Mandal building in Shivaji Peth in the heart of Kolhapur. The organisation from which the structure takes its name is home to one of the city’s more prestigious football groups. It also hosts a famous Ganapati every September. In October, the building also became the temporary headquarters of the committee that would organise the city’s largest-ever rally.

A poster reminds people at the rally in Kolhapur to attend the largest one planned in Mumbai for after Diwali. Photo credit: Mridula Chari

Wheels turning

Behind the pious declarations of the rallies being leaderless, and by implication free of corruption from hidden agendas, there is a smoothly running mechanism that generates the conformity across districts and manufactures the discourse that channels lakhs of voices into a seemingly unified one.

There are several theories of how the rallies first began. Some say planning began a year ago.

There is also the theory that a group of Marathas gathered on July 14 in Kolhapur to discuss the rallies at a roundtable conference on the future of the Maratha community. There were 500 people at this conference.

Dilip Patil, founder of the Kshatriya Maratha Chamber of Commerce and owner of four steel factories on the outskirts of Kolhapur, was among them. He was introduced to this reporter by several people at the Shivaji Tarun Mandal as one of the key organisers of the rally.

Patil described the core membership of the organisers of the conference as a thinktank, which included poets, journalists, authors, industrialists and agricultural leaders. They were careful to avoid people associated with any political party.

The conference took place a day after news of a gang rape and murder at Kopardi in Ahmednagar district broke. This incident, in which three Dalits are alleged to have gang raped and then murdered a 15-year-old Maratha girl, has become the flash point for the community. The three Dalits are alleged to have threatened the girl’s family by claiming that they would file a case against them under the Prevention of Atrocity Act if they complained to the police about the rape, which is why Marathas are now demanding that the act be diluted.

The meeting itself had been planned some months ago, Patil said, even before the agitations of Patels in Gujarat and Jats in Haryana – other dominant castes that also want government assistance. The idea, Patil said, was that the Maratha community was floundering and needed direction. For that, it would be best for Maratha organisations that had gathered to share resources and plan together.

“To organise the community, we had to raise feelings,” Patil said. “Kopardi helped us to materialise that. When we heard the news at the conference, the inner voices of all the people was raised and that was when we first began to come together.”

Dilip Patil. Photo credit: Mridula Chari
 

No room for politicians?

Their first rally in Ahmednagar in July was a regular morcha, complete with slogans and leadership. The response, however was cold, and only one lakh people attended.

“Our thinktank people thought then this should be a mook morcha [silent rally] and that if all the political people were out, more people would join,” Patil explained.

The groups were tapping into an evidently growing anxiety of Marathas across the state. Their perception was that while political and economic power is certainly in Maratha hands, it is concentrated only in a few families. Most others have not seen these benefits.

“The government was made of our people for 50 or 60 years,” Avinash Naik, from Hervad, 50 km from Kolhapur, who attended the Kolhapur rally on October 15, told Scroll.in. “So the leaders said the Marathas are our people only, who else will they go to? They took us for granted and just took out the caste card at election. This is our way of showing them.”

While the organisers claimed they were non-political, that did not prevent politicians from frequenting the rally headquarters at Shivaji Tarun Mandal. Among the people who came “as Marathas, not as party people” were politicians from the Nationalist Congress Party and the Bharatiya Janata Party.

Uttam Korade, associated with the Nationalist Congress Party, spoke of his considerations in coming there.

“The public hopes that a new person will do more than the old one, so it is good that they sent NCP out of power this time and see the other side,” he said. “They think they will get 100% work from the new person, but now they are getting not even 20%. Then in the next election, they will be happy with the 60% of the Congress-NCP. Now I am here to support them because they are my community.”

Korade’s son was unable to get admission into an engineering college without him having to pay a capitation fee.

“To be honest, there is very little education talent in the Marathas,” Korade said. “But even the 5% of the community that has talent cannot get admissions in colleges. At least I have money so I can make it happen, but what about the poor?”

Several parents dressed their children in saffron accessories for the rally. Their main concern was reservations. Photo credit: Mridula Chari
 

Sticking to the script

A great deal of emphasis has been placed on crafting the narrative in the minds of people who were to attend the rallies. In Kolhapur, young women and girls were despatched to villages to hold “janjagruti” discussions – or discussions to awaken the people. Armed with a set script, these volunteers were to rattle off the list of demands to village residents and coax them into attending.

This they did in large numbers, and stayed on message. At the Kolhapur rally, organisers encouraged people to speak to journalists only of the main demands and not of their personal lives. They used social media too. When the mainstream Marathi media did not cover their first three rallies, the organisations called for a boycott of one of these outlets on Twitter and Facebook. After this, Patil claimed, they have gotten solid, consistent coverage.

The decision to use Kopardi as a rallying point was taken on the day of the Kolhapur conference. The group also attempted to make it clear that only this incident and no other would be used – in order to keep emotions under control.

The script has already slipped once. In early October, there was an incident in Nashik where initial rumours suggested that a Dalit teenager had allegedly raped a five-year-old Maratha girl, Though doctors confirmed after medical examination that she had not been raped, violence broke out across the district. But Patil claims that this was an aberration, and that the group did their best to ensure that the unrest did not travel outside Nashik.

“We have to raise spirit only, not the instinct to fight,” Patil said. “After Kopardi, there were incidents at Pathardi and Nashik. Why do you think nobody at this rally is talking about them? Because our social media team has made sure not to let any message of that circulate.”

Volunteers in yellow cordon off a narrow path to allow protestors stuck farther down the road to move ahead. Photo credit: Mridula Chari
 

Standing against it

Despite the community's anger, it ignores a simple fact: no matter how poor a Maratha might be, that person will have more social power at the village level than Dalits or members of the Other Backward Classes. This, claims Shravan Deore, a leader who has been organising silent counter-rallies of OBCs in Marathwada, is the reason the Maratha events have been so well-attended – to the point that even certain OBC and Muslim groups have endorsed and joined the marches.

“In any village, the Patil is the zamindar or watandar [land owner] and does not even have to hold political position to be dominant,” explained Deore. “All they have to do is put a vehicle in the village and everyone will have to come, whether they are Mali or Teli. … The entire private and government machinery is in their support. Aisa unka morcha yun hi nikal jata hai. This is how their rallies happen without any effort.”

That is also why the Dalit and OBC counter-rallies so far have seen fewer numbers gathering, he said. It was simply difficult to get people to spend their own money to come.

“All of us initially supported the Maratha morcha in Aurangabad because we all thought that what happened in Kopardi was very wrong,” Deore said. “But when we saw their demands, insecurity began to grow in our people.

Around one lakh people attended an OBC rally against the Marathas in Nashik on October 3. Dalit and OBC groups have also held separate silent rallies in Beed and Jalna. Some organisations plan to organise a rally in Mumbai as well, but planning for this is still underway.

“Be very clear," said Deore. For the Marathas this is not a war against a party, ideology or religion. This is a caste war. But we also have some tradition of fighting, so we are not going to sit silently.”

A water stall with the images of Chhatrapati Shahu and BR Ambedkar above it courtesy of Rajesh Latkar stands unfrequented early in the morning of the rally. Photo credit: Mridula Chari

This Article was first published on Scroll.in

The post Supporting caste: A peek at the massive machine behind the enormous Maratha rallies appeared first on SabrangIndia.

They proudly claim to be descendants of Shivaji Maharaj, not the exclusionary sword wielding Hindu but the humane inclusive leader, whose governance not just had representation for all, but whose legacy can be seen in the policies that Shahu Maharaj brought in affirmative action for the first time towards the end of the 19^th century, in Kolhapur state. Hence the emotive demand for one large statue in honour of Shivaji.

Presently, the Maratha Reservation Resolution is being circulated and scrutinised by large numbers of village panchayats in Maharashtra. This will form the basis for the demands to be put first before the collector and then the government. The young leaders of the Maratha Kranti morcha are busy in this task. (The resolutions apart from the demand for capital punishment in the Kopardi rape case and amendment to the atrocities act, speak of the implementation of Dr Swaminathan's report highlighting fair prices of grains, Shivaji Maharaj memorial in Arabian Sea project, etc. All these were unanimously approved in the general body meeting of the village panchayat.)

"The village panchayat resolutions can be used as the referential evidence in the court. The 73^rd amendment in the Indian constitution has given the independent rights to the local bodies," said Advocate Vishal Kadam, activist of the Maratha Kranti morcha. Advocate Kadam is studying all aspects of the Maratha reservation and collecting all sort of evidence to support the demand. "It builds the pressure on the government," he added. "Critically, last Sunday (October 3, 2016) the village panchayat of Lok-Khed Akot Taluka in Akola district passed the resolution of Maratha reservation, punishment to Kopardi accused when across castes – Dalit, Vanjari, Dhangar and Muslim community unanimously approved the resolution at the general body meeting. Teesta Setalvad spoke to Vishal Kadam in Pune on the surging anger within the Marathas and its roots.

Vishal Kadam

Jati Madhye Arthik Prashnachya Ladha —it is a struggle for economic rights within a wider caste struggle; yes, we are talking about caste, the Marathas but also for Maati, the Land (earth).

It is an insult (apman) to interpret this as a narrow caste struggle. On the issue of Atrocities Act too, the way the law exists, it is not even benefitting Dalits. All we are saying amend it slightly to prevent its misuse: make the offences bailable but ensure stringent procedures through the special courts. If the complainant who made out the complaint, and the witness, on the basis of which the atrocities case is filed, does not stand by his initial version, let there be punishment. We know there are atrocities against Dalits and do not want to repeal simply an amendment. The media, particularly large sections of the corporate-driven media are trivialising the issue; at the ground level the reporter knows what we are saying has merit.

Do you know the kind of discussions afoot within Maratha WhatsApp groups? Serious questions affecting the people are being debated in these groups. Real life concerns. There is no glamour or ‘powerful backing’ as is being insinuated. The debates and the agitations reflect a ground reality which is not visible in the media speculation. The superficial interpretation that, because, after years, Maharashtra does not have a Maratha chief minister, that grievance is at the root of these agitations across towns and cities is one such trivialisation.

It is critical to reflect what is behind the current Maratha agitation. There is a section of the powerful Maratha caste(s), from the NCP or even the BJP who are trying to appropriate the current agitation for their own narrow, political benefits. But the root of this agitation goes far beyond that. There is economic backwardness. There is no societal respect and in the fancy super speciality courses there is no admission for the Marathas.

There have been no answers from the political establishment to the real life questions raised by Marathas.

The ghastly rape at Kopardi was the trigger. Even today, the state is not taking the case seriously: statements of the parents have not been recorded, there is no seriousness visible. But this trigger has now set off debates and demands – long pending – on the economic and cultural marginalisation of the Marathas.
 
Farmer Suicides, Landless Labourers Wows 
Two lakh farmer suicides have been from among the Maratha caste. Twenty per cent of the Marathas, all in Maharashtra are landless labourers. The inability to pay loans for children’s education, a daughter’s marriage cause humiliation and have led to suicides. If there is a sudden sickness or accident in the family, there is no surplus saving for treatment. It is this hopelessness that has led to the suicides

Shetkari Apaghat Vima Yojana 2014 has done more damage than good. Deviously, or at least inexplicably, the payment for ‘accident’ deaths under the scheme is 2 lakhs and for ‘suicide’ it’s only 1 lakh! There is therefore an incentive to show deaths as accident not suicide! The suicide happens, after consumption of poison (vish prashan) and the victim is taken to a private hospital: either deliberately or otherwise the death is regarded as ‘taking poison by mistake.’ This has caused a drastic reduction in deaths by suicide (a poltical issue for the government) and led to a greater ‘accidental’ deaths so that more money can be claimed!
 
Education Loans
The Super Speciality Institutions have both glamour, image and name, like the IIMs, IITs and these institutions are generally dominated by Brahmins or Marwaris – the moneyed classes who have huge resources. This is a crucial source of angst for Maratha youth: access to higher education. Is this possible without a quota when fees are so high, sometimes as much as Rs 2 lakhs a year.

(In the IITs and IIMs, there are reservations of 15, 7 and 27 per cent for the Schedules Castes, Scheduled Tribes and OBCs respectively. Marathas do not fall under any category. Fees for the general and OBCs category are Rs 76,000 on an average per semester and with two semesters a year, the fee is about Rs. 1.5 lakh.)

Ninety per cent of Marathas earn Rs 50 per day. Fifty-sixty per cent of Marathas are daily wage earners. How will they compete and access higher education. Marathas are your Sugarcane workers, workers who access MGNREGA, domestic workers, small holdings landowners, rickshaw pullers/drivers, thelewalas (small daily business workers on carts).

Video Courtesy: Maharashtra1 TV

Marathas Do Not Qualify for Below Poverty Line (BPL) Cards
Despite this economic situation, and despite the fact that 60 per cent of those actually under the poverty line are Marathas (and as I said earlier 50-60 per cent being daily wage earners earning Rs 50 a day) being a ‘forward backward caste’, not an OBC, Marathas are not entitled to being included in the yellow card BPL list. That is another concrete demand since 1997 that has not  been met: for Marathas to be included in the yellow BPL card category. Though 60 per cent of those actually under the poverty line are Marathas we do not have access to this economic benefit.[1]
 
Rest of the Thirty Per Cent
Thirty per cent of Marathas have two, three acres of land, a shop, (typically this will be a stationary or kirana/grocery shop), one family member will be a teacher: the income for the whole family will be Rs 30,000 income. Though educated they have no special training or skills cannot be entrepreneurs, have no access to capital nor bank loans as they have nothing to mortgage. Hence for several family members there is no means of livelihood.

There are vasts numbers of Maratha youths who are educated but not employed hence non-marriageable.
 
Hence Marathas had made the demand that for applicants to the public services (MPSC and UPSC ), the age-limit should be increased over thirty years and this has recently, just, been accepted. This however is not an answer. Typically Marathas have a rationing agency, they are thekedars on the Pune, Mumbai, Nashik highway bit their economic condition is in a crisis.
 
The High Powered Marathas
Only 5-7% of the Marathas are or have reached the higher/upper middle class. Two to three per cent of these are in power or very close to political power. Suddenly even for this section, the government policies of the present government are found to be a running interference: there is undue government influence in the cooperative sugar factories sector. Even that section is therefore disgruntled.
 
Agitation Pushed Government on Maratha Quota
Till this agitation gained ground, the Maharashtra government (under the Bharatiya Janata Party-BJP) had not moved against the stay order disallowing quota/reservations for the Marathas. There is a huge churning, need for affirmative action. But there is also confusion: what should be the constitutional provision? Should this be from the OBCs, Other OBCS, should it follow an economic criteria? This is what we are busy working out right now under the leadership of persons like Justice B G Kolse Patil and P B Sawant. Ninety per cent of the momentum for this agitation comes from there.
 
Agrarian Distress
The issue of mininum support price for farmers, loans for farmers, making agriculture a productive act: this is at the core of the present agitation. The Annasaheb Patil Arthik Vikas Mahamandal established 10-15 years back was not given capital. Why? There is a deliberate attempt to undermine and not allow the economic status of Marathas to be uplifted.
 
Casteist Influences
There were attempts, by sections, dominated by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and other political outfits to narrow the broader demands of the Maratha youth agitating by trying to pit us against Dalits, against others. But that has not been and will not be the focus. Our focus is economic rights within the paradigms of a caste system that has left us behind in many ways – economic and cultural. Divisive forces won’t succeed, we will not let them succeed. Our demands are within the spheres of education and economic development, agriculture and others. We wish to take others along and not pit ourselves against them.
 
(As told to Teesta Setalvad) 

The post Economic Rights within a Caste Struggle: Vishal Kadam on the Maratha Upsurge appeared first on SabrangIndia.

श्री गडकरी ने कहा, “कुछ नेताओं ने सरकार में रहते हुए जातियों की भलाई के लिए कुछ नहीं किया, और अब सत्ता से हटने पर उन्हें जाति याद आ रही है।"

मराठा आरक्षण आंदोलन में महाराष्ट्र में भाजपा नेतृत्व की सरकार बुरी तरह से घिरी हुई है, लेकिन श्री गडकरी ने इसकी अनदेखी करते हुए कहा कि भाजपा का रवैया एकदम स्पष्ट है, और वह गरीबों का उत्थान चाहती है ताकि किसी को आरक्षण की ज़रूरत न रहे।

एनसीपी नेता शरद पवार मराठा आंदोलन को लेकर राज्य सरकार की आलोचना कर चुके हैं। उन्होंने कहा है कि मराठा आंदोलन सरकार के खिलाफ असंतोष का नतीजा है।

राज्य में 32 फीसदी आबादी वाला मराठा अपने लिए आरक्षण की मांग कर रहा है, साथ ही अनुसचित जाति जनजाति अत्याचार निरोधक अधिनियम की समीक्षा की मांग भी कर रहा है। देवेंद्र फड़नवीस सरकार इस मामले में कोई फैसला नहीं कर पा रही है। भाजपा नेताओं ने आरोप लगाया है कि एनसीपी मराठा आंदोलन को भड़का रही है। राज्य कार्यसमिति की बैठक में श्री गडकरी ने यह भी कहा कि केंद्र सरकार ने पंडित दीनदयाल उपाध्याय के जन्मशती वर्ष, 2016 को निर्धन कल्याण वर्ष के रूप में मनाने का ऐलान किया है क्योंकि गरीबों की कोई जाति नहीं होती।

हालाँकि राज्य कार्यसमिति में भाजपा ने आरक्षण मुक्त देश के लिए प्रतिबद्धता जताई लेकिन उसने मराठा आरक्षण की मांग का भी समर्थन किया और इस बारे में औपचारिक प्रस्ताव भी पारित किया है।

The post गरीब की कोई जाति नहीं होती-मराठा आरक्षण पर बोले गडकरी appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Mumbai, Oct 5 (PTI) With the Maratha community's state-wide silent marches making news, a group of techies have developed a mobile App to provide better communication about the rallies.

Image: Indian Express

A Kolhapur-based software firm today launched the App named 'EXYnow' for Maratha Kranti Morcha which has received over 500 downloads so far.

"The app is going to be used for holding of all future rallies across the state, including the Mumbai rally for which stalwarts from the community are holding rounds of meetings," EXYnow Pvt Ltd founder Vinayak Bhogan told PTI.

"I am testing the app for the October 15th rally, which will be organised in Kolhapur city. I can make some changes into it as per the requirement so that it would be extremely useful for the crucial Mumbai rally," he said.

A 'war room', is set up at Dasara chowk in Kolhapur which is coordinating routes, communication with people from various villages, towns and legal permissions such as use of drones, cameras, video recordings among others, he said.

The team behind the app call themselves "digital volunteers" and aim to reach out to the Maratha community through social networking sites, track news appearing in the mainstream media and spread the message about the rallies.

With only ten days left for the rally, the Maratha organisations have stepped up efforts to reach out to a large number of people of their community to participate.

The rally in Kolhapur will be the last one planned at the district level.

More than 20 rallies have already taken place across the state over the last one-and-a-half months. The final rally or the 'maha morcha' will be organised in Mumbai, and is likely to be held after Diwali.

Once registered for the application, a person can upload photos, videos, comments and also get help from the volunteers if they are stuck somewhere along the rally route.

The application will work as a communication platform among volunteers during the rally.

The organisers believe the rally will see a higher turnout as compared to other rallies that have taken place in the state.

Historian and activist from Kolhapur, Indrajit Sawant said Mumbai rally is crucial not for showing the strength but also for managing the crowd coming from various parts of the state as most of them are unaware of roads in the metropolis.

In such a situation, the App would be a support to small groups coming from remote areas, he said.

Source: PTI

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