Maharashtra's Leader of the Opposition in the Council, Ambadas Danve, accused the state government on Monday of not inviting his party, the Shiv Sena-UBT, to the all-party meeting scheduled for this evening to discuss the contentious issue of Maratha quotas.
Criticizing Chief Minister Eknath Shinde's government as "mean-minded" and accusing them of engaging in political games, Danve stated that while he has been invited in his role as the Leader of the Opposition in the Council, his party, Shiv Sena-UBT, has been notably absent from the list of invitees.
"Many big and small parties have been invited for this meeting. But the government has not officially invited the Shiv Sena-UBT. I have been invited as the Leader of Opposition," Danve said.
He also highlighted that Bharatiya Janata Party leader Chandrakant Patil, who heads a panel for Maratha reservations, has been invited to the meeting as a minister and questioned the government's intentions behind this decision.
However, Danve questioned the inclusion of several other ministers in the meeting and their relevance to the issue. He pointed out that when the former Maha Vikas Aghadi Chief Minister, Uddhav Thackeray, had organized a similar meeting, he had invited around five dozen organizations to participate. In contrast, the current meeting did not include a single organization on the list of invitees.
Furthermore, he raised concerns about whether the government had designated an official representative to meet and engage in discussions with Manoj Jarange-Patil, who has been on an indefinite hunger strike for the past 14 days demanding Maratha quotas.
Meanwhile, a total of 32 representatives from the ruling coalition, which includes Shiv Sena, BJP, Nationalist Congress Party, and the All People's Congress, as well as Congress' Leader of the Opposition in the Assembly, Vijay Wadettiwar, along with representatives from other significant and minor political parties and officials, have received invitations to participate in the 'all-party' meeting, where the Chief Minister is scheduled to address later this evening.