Maratha bandh begins with protest marches, buses targeted in Thane, Navi Mumbai

Stone-pelting and protests were reported from a few places in Mumbai on Wednesday as the state braced for a bandh called by the Maratha Kranti Morcha demanding reservation for the community in Maharashtra.

The Morcha activists took out marches and held up traffic at several places as the shutdown began in Mumbai, Thane, Navi Mumbai, and several other areas of Maharashtra on Wednesday morning.

The train services are running as usual and security has been beefed up at several stations. Nearly 40 Railway Protection Force and Government Railway Police personnel were deployed at Dadar, CSMT and 20 at Kurla.

Shops were closed in Navi Mumbai and auto-rickshaws were off the roads, a day after large-scale violence marred a statewide protest by Maratha outfits demanding quota in jobs and education. Schools and colleges, however, were exempt from the shutdown.

Read: Here’s why Marathas protest for reservation time and again

Incidents of stone pelting on buses were reported from some places including Wagale in Thane and Ghansoli in Navi Mumbai.

The decision to call a bandh (shutdown) was taken at a meeting of Maratha organisations at Shivaji Mandir in Mumbai on Tuesday afternoon. The Maratha Kranti Morcha, an umbrella body of various community groups, announced the bandh.

The Marathas have been agitating for reservation for the community in government jobs and education for a while now.

The organisation has appealed to community members to observe the bandh peacefully. Essential services have been exempted from the bandh, it added.

At the meeting, representatives of the various Maratha outfits passed a resolution condemning chief minister Devendra Fadnavis for the government’s delay on the issue of reservation.

The last bandh that Mumbai experienced was the one called by Dalit groups in January this year, which saw several incidents of violence and brought Mumbai to a grinding halt.