Prominent social activist and Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP) founder Dipke has called upon the Maharashtra state government to initiate immediate, constructive dialogue with Maratha quota activist Manoj Jarange Patil, warning that any coercive administrative or police measures could inflame social unrest across rural Maharashtra, according to reporting by The Free Press Journal.
Addressing media personnel in Mumbai, Dipke cautioned the state cabinet against adopting an adversarial posture toward the ongoing agitation centered in Jalna district. Jarange Patil has repeatedly undertaken indefinite hunger strikes demanding that the state government issue Kunbi caste certificates to all eligible Marathas in the Marathwada region, enabling them to access reservations under the Other Backward Classes (OBC) category.
The quota demand has triggered complex social and political friction in Maharashtra, with established OBC organizations voicing intense resistance against any administrative dilution of the existing 27% OBC reservation pool. Legal scholars point out that previous legislative attempts by the state to institute separate Maratha quota laws were invalidated by the Supreme Court of India in 2021 for breaching the 50% reservation cap established in the landmark Indra Sawhney judgment.
Dipke urged the state administration to constitute an all-party consultative committee and invite community leaders for transparent negotiations, emphasizing that durable solutions require consensus-building, rigorous empirical backwardness surveys, and judicial compatibility rather than short-term political assurances.
