Sharad Pawar harps on Maratha-Muslim ahead of local body polls

After the Kopardi rape of minor incident, Nationalist Congress President (NCP) chief Sharad Pawar decided to revive its eroding Maratha-OBC community support base. Mr Pawar also tried to woo the Muslim youths by blaming the BJP government for their arrests on bogus cases.

Maratha-OBC community are protesting against the Kopardi incident, where the nine-year-old girl was raped and murdered. One of accused in this case threatened the parent of the victim by atrocity law if the incident was reported to the police.

"Such threatening of the rape accused caused anger and unrest among the Maratha-OBC community. Police also helped the accused to register the atrocity case against the victim parent. Due to this, people are voluntarily joining the protest in large numbers and showing their anger against the government in a peaceful way. For the first time after the independence, Maratha-OBC community people are coming together demanding amendments in the atrocity law," said Professor Liladhar Patil, Maratha leader, North Maharashtra.

Professor Surendhra Jondhale, Political science, Mumbai University said that the NCP and Congress leaders had given the tacit support to the Maratha protests. "Most of the logistic and financial support has been provided by the NCP-Congress, Sambhaji brigade leaders, etc to these well planned morchas. NCP is known to be a Maratha-OBC dominated leaders party, but this prominent community did not vote for the NCP in large numbers in the preceding Lok Sabha and State Assembly elections. NCP chief Sharad Pawar wants to regain the lost ground, however, it was not expected from Mr Pawar to harp on the caste-base-divide politics," Jondhale said.

He said majority of the Maratha leaders felt marginalised in the BJP-ruled government. "Marathas has been ruling the state and their dominance still continues in the new BJP government. Maratha leaders from the NCP and the Congress disconnected themselves from their own community. Now, this is the right time for them to connect and consolidate their support base, ahead of the local body elections," Jondhale added.

He said the Dalits and the Marathas have lived together for years and they have a good reputation. "Dalit are mainly unhappy with the OBC leaders and community, who availed maximum reservation benefits, but when it came to the fight for the reservation, they never come out. Dalit can not alienate from the Maratha community because their life is interconnected with the agriculture sector, where Marathas has dominance. There are miscreants in every society and the same is with the Dalits, who use the atrocity to extort money and blackmail the upper caste people. However, if the amendment is carried out in Atrocity law stating the if someone misuses the act, s/he shall be punished. The atrocity law is there to protect them and not to harass people and extort money," said another Maratha leader requested anonymity.

NCP spokesperson Nawab Malik said that the Marathas, Muslims and Dalits have always voted for NCP. "We do not have special programme for any community. We will take all sections along to throw the BJP out of power," said Malik.