Maratha quota activist Manoj Jarange on Thursday said the Maharashtra government should declare before Diwali a wet drought in the areas affected by heavy rains and floods, and warned of launching an agitation if it failed to do so. He also said farming should be accorded the status of a job and the government should pay to farmers every month for their work. Addressing a rally at Narayangad in Beed district on the occasion of Dussehra, Jarange hit out at BJP leader and Maharashtra minister Pankaja Munde over her reported "gazette of slavery" remark on the government's decision to implement the Hyderabad gazette for providing reservation to the Maratha community. Several parts of the state, especially the Marathwada region comprising Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar, Dharashiv, Latur, Nanded, Jalna, Hingoli, Parbhani and Beed districts, were battered by torrential rains, resulting in discharge of water from dams and flooding, in the last fortnight. Crops on thousands of acres were damaged. "Declare a wet drought in the flood-hit areas of the state before Diwali. Give Rs 70,000 per hectare, that too in cash, to the farmers who lost their crops. Those who lost soil and crops both, should be given Rs 1.30 lakh per hectare. Those who lost their standing crops as well as houses, should get 100 per cent compensation based on the survey. The government should not deduct Rs 15 from sug
The government should give complete loan waiver and jobs to the kin of those farmers who committed suicide, he said.arcane farmers," he said. If it does not fulfil these demands before Diwali, we will launch an agitation, Jarange warned. "Farming should be given the status of a (government) job and the government should start paying to the farmers every month," he said. In order to gather funds for the affected farmers, the government should deduct 25 per cent from the salaries of its employees, he said. "There are 4-5 lakh officers. So deduction from their salaries will give thousands of crores of rupees to the government. Each political party has thousands of workers, MPs and MLAs, and they have properties worth thousands of crores. The government should gather funds from leaders like Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, Deputy CMs Eknath Shinde, Ajit Pawar, (Shiv Sena UBT chief) Uddhav Thackeray and others instead of taking from the farmers," he said. If farmers' issues are not solved, we will not let the government machinery install ballot units in our villages, Jarange warned. Talking about the Maratha reservation, he said if Marathas from Marathwada and western Maharashtra get reservation, the community will become powerful. "If the government does not resolve the pending quota issues and implement reservation, we will defeat the ruling parties in every single seat in the upcoming elections," he said.
Members of the Maratha community should become rulers as well as administrators (officers), he said. "The administrators have such powers that even influential people, politicians and goons have to stand before them. If people from the community get big posts in every field, the community will get support," the activist said. If anyone disrespects Marathas, you should teach them a lesson for life time, he urged the community members. Criticising Munde over her 'gazette of slavery' remark, Jarange said, "Some people call it a gazette of slavery. So do they consider children from our community as slaves? Why are people from our community working for the political parties of such leaders for money? If they call us slaves, then were the British their relatives?" "This is not something that the Maratha community voted for you in the last 30 years during elections. Once we start making them lose in elections, they will realise," he added. The state government on September 2 accepted Jarange's demands to provide Kunbi caste certificates to Marathas, leading to the end of his five-day-long hunger aran