Mumbai: Senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) ministers decided in a latenight meeting on Monday to aggressively counter the Opposition on the Maratha quota issue and not to table the Maharashtra State Backward Class Commission report in the House.
Chief minister Devendra Fadnavis, additionally, has levelled allegations of stalling reservation for Marathas against Opposition parties.
Meanwhile, sources informed The Asian Age that Mr Fadnavis has made it clear to his party colleagues that the party’s central leadership has given him a free hand on the reservation bill issue.
The Opposition has been asking to table the report, which concluded that the Maratha community is backward. The Maratha reservation bill, which will be tabled in the House on Thursday, is based on this report. But the state government believes that if the report goes public, more legal hurdles would emerge to Maratha reservation.
Mr Fadnavis and his senior party colleagues met to discuss the political and legal repercussions of the situation. It was decided in this meeting that the government wouldn’t give the Opposition’s demands to table the report. Instead, it was decided that the BJP would go all out and make sure that the Assembly functions despite Opposition’s aggressive approach.
The script was followed on Thursday as the Opposition kept on asking for the report, but the government proceeded to conduct business, pushing almost nine bills, amid ruckus in the House. Furthermore, BJP members even raised slogans against Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party in both Houses. Also, as the Upper House was adjourned for the day, BJP members sat on the steps of Vidhan Bhavan and raised slogans against Opposition leader Dhananjay Munde.
