Jalna. Maratha reservation movement activist Manoj Jarange on Sunday rejected the talk that his movement will have no impact in the Maharashtra Assembly elections. The Mahayuti alliance retained power in Maharashtra by winning 230 seats in the elections for the 288-member assembly. The election results were declared on Saturday. The grand alliance also includes the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Chief Minister Eknath Shinde’s Shiv Sena and Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar’s Nationalist Congress Party (NCP). Mahayuti won 40 out of 46 seats in the Marathwada region, including all five seats in Jalna.
Jalna has been the center of Jarange’s movement demanding reservation for the Maratha community in jobs and education. The poor performance of the ruling coalition in this year’s Lok Sabha elections was largely attributed to Jarange’s movement. Jarange had made sharp remarks especially against Deputy Chief Minister and veteran BJP leader Devendra Fadnavis.
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Jarange said, “How can anyone say that the Jarange factor failed in the assembly elections, when I neither contested the elections nor supported anyone? I freed the Maratha community from the clutches of these political parties. The Maratha community got the freedom to vote as per their choice. My focus is on empowering the Marathas.” Expressing satisfaction over the election results, he said that 204 Maratha candidates have been elected to the 288-member Maharashtra Assembly.
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Jarange had been regularly talking about fielding candidates or defeating those opposing the community’s reservation demand ahead of the November 20 assembly elections. The opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) could win only 46 seats. The MVA consists of Congress, NCP (Sharadchandra Pawar) and Shiv Sena (Ubhatha). BJP got 132 seats, Shiv Sena got 57, while NCP got 41 seats. Candidates from the Nationalist Congress Party (Sharadchandra Pawar), part of the MVA, won 10 seats and Congress won 16 seats, while Shiv Sena (Ubatha) won 20 seats.
