Who is Manoj Jarange Patil? The face of the Maratha reservation campaign

Maratha activist Manoj Jarange is on Day 4 of hunger strike at Azad Maidan in Mumbai. PIC/ PTI

Forty-three-year-old Manoj Jarange has emerged as the most prominent face of the Maratha reservation agitation, a movement that has gripped Maharashtra in recent years. Hailing from a humble farming family in Matori village of Beed district, Jarange's journey has been anything but ordinary.

Before rising to prominence as a community leader, Jarange worked in a hotel and later in a sugar factory in Shahgad in Ambad tehsil of Jalna district. His simple rural upbringing and struggles for livelihood resonate with thousands of Marathas, many of whom now see him as the community's strongest voice.

Jarange shot to the spotlight with his series of indefinite fasts demanding a quota for Marathas. His current protest, which began last Friday, marks the seventh hunger strike since 2023, and is being described by supporters as the community's "final fight" for the reservation. The movement has drawn massive crowds, with large gatherings at Azad Maidan in South Mumbai, where protesters rallied to show solidarity with the activist.

"While working for the Congress party, he became the district president of the Youth Congress around 2000. However, due to the ideological differences over some political issues, he left the Congress and started working for a Maratha community organisation," Prof Chandrakant Bharat, co-ordinator of the Maratha Kranti Morcha (MKM) told PTI. He is one of the outfits that has been agitating for quotas for the community, PTI reported.

Around 2011, Jarange formed an organisation named 'Shivba Sanghatana', he said.

Jarange's agitations are not limited to the Maratha quota issue alone. He also took up issues related to farmers. In 2013, he launched an agitation for the demand to release water from the Jayakwadi dam for the cultivators in Jalna, Bharat told PTI.

"He was actively involved in the pro-Maratha quota marches that were taken out in 2016 across the state and took community members from Marathwada in central Maharashtra to Mumbai to put forward their demands before the then-BJP government led by Devendra Fadnavis," the MKM functionary stated.

Jarange's agitation in Sashti Pimpalgaon of Jalna district lasted for nearly 90 days, Bharat said.

His father, Raosaheb and mother, Prabhabai, still reside in Matori. His elder brothers Jagannath and Kakasaheb also live there and do farming, Bharat informed.

(With PTI inputs)