On Tuesday, May 11, a delegation of Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi (MVA) leaders, led by chief minister Uddhav Thackeray, met Governor Bhagat Singh Koshyari to submit a memorandum urging President Ramnath Kovind’s intervention for providing reservation to the Maratha community.
After the meeting, Thackeray said they will also be meeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi to seek reservation for the community.
This development came six days after Supreme Court struck down the law to provide reservation to Marathas in education and jobs.
This was the first meeting between the governor and the CM in a long time; they have been at loggerheads over several issues, the last being the episode where the governor had to get off a state government aircraft after the CM denied him permission to use it.
मुख्यमंत्री उद्धव बाळासाहेब ठाकरे यांनी आज शिष्टमंडळासमवेत माननीय राज्यपाल @BSKoshyari यांची राजभवन येथे भेट घेतली व मराठा आरक्षणासंदर्भात केंद्र सरकारने पाऊले उचलण्याबाबत राष्ट्रपतींना विनंती करणारे पत्र दिले. pic.twitter.com/pN2dZTaJ03
— CMO Maharashtra (@CMOMaharashtra) May 11, 2021
He was accompanied by deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar, state Congress president Nana Patole and cabinet members Ashok Chavan, Balasaheb Thorat, Eknath Shinde and Dilip Walse Patil. Significantly, after the brief meeting, Thackeray made an attempt to blame his predecessor Devendra Fadnavis for the manner in which the apex court struck down the legislation.
In his five-page letter to PM Modi, Thackeray has stated that in view of the SC order, it is the President of India and the government of India alone that can identify and notify the Maratha community as socially and educationally backward, enabling it to enjoy reservation. Fadnavis described the CM’s statement as duplicity, saying that when the law was drafted, the Shiv Sena was a partner in government and now that the state lost the legal battle, the CM is, unfortunately, blaming him.
Last week, the Supreme Court had quashed a Maharashtra law granting reservation to the Maratha community saying people from the community can’t be declared educationally and socially backwards just to bring them in the reserved category. It had termed the reservation as “unconstitutional".
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