Fadnavis asks MVA leaders to clarify stand on Maratha reservation

Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis asked Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) leaders to clarify their stand on reservation for the Maratha community while addressing the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) state convention in the city on Sunday.

“Uddhav Thackeray, Nana Patole and Sharad Pawar should clarify their stand on reservation to Marathas through Other Backward Class (OBC) quota. Do you support it or not?” he said.

The Deputy Chief Minister also stated that his party will expose the MVA leaders in the Maratha reservation.

When Fadnavis joined hands with Ajit Pawar’s Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), he said that in politics, sometimes one has to compromise.

“The BJP brought the Mahayuti government to power so that Maharashtra can remain under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has transformed the country and accelerated development,” he said.

The RSS-linked Marathi weekly ‘Vivek’ last week blamed Ajit Pawar’s NCP as one of the reasons behind the BJP’s poor performance in the Lok Sabha elections in Maharashtra. The article in ‘Vivek’, titled ‘Karyakarta khachlelanahi, tar sambhramat’ (Worker is not discouraged, but confused), also blamed the lack of communication between the BJP and its workers as another reason behind the poor poll performance.

Meanwhile, Fadnavis accused members of the MVA of planning to derail the ambitious ‘Mukhyamantri Majhi Ladki Bahin Yojana’, which guarantees a monthly cash benefit of ₹1,500 for women with an annual income of less than ₹2.5 lakh.

“I have seen opposition leaders and their workers going to cities and collecting applications from women for the programme. But their (MVA’s) strategy is to collect applications from women and not submit them to the government so that the intended beneficiaries do not get money and the government is discredited in the process,” he said.

“Therefore, we have to fill the applications of women on the spot and submit them to the government authorities,” said Fadnavis.

So far, the government has received over 4.7 lakh applications and Mahayuti leaders believe this could be a turning point in the upcoming elections.

Maharashtra is likely to hold elections to the 288-member legislative assembly as the current government’s term ends in 2024. However, the Election Commission has not yet announced the dates.