Karnataka bus set on fire as Maratha quota protest turns violent

Amid the ongoing violence over the Maratha quota issue, the protesters on Monday night set a bus belonging to Kalyana Karnataka Road Transport Corporation (KKRTC) on fire in Maharashtra. The bus was set on fire near Tururi in Maharashtra. According to sources, the bus was on its way to Maharashtra’s Pune from Karnataka’s Bhalki. 

Before setting the bus on fire, the protesters asked 39 passengers traveling in the bus to get down. Following ṭhe incident, the Karnataka government suspended bus services to Maharashtra. It has been learnt that a case has been registered at Ummarga Police Station in Maharashtra.

Maratha protest turns violent

The protest by the Maratha community for reservation took a violent turn on Monday after protesters targeted the houses and offices of several legislators in Beed and Chhatrapati Sambhaji Nagar (formerly Aurangabad) districts. 

The protest took place after Maratha reservation activist Manoj Jarange-Patil staged a hunger strike since Friday demanding that the state government should consider all Marathas as Kunbi (a sub-caste of Maratha) to entitle them to reservation benefits for jobs and education available to people from the Other Backward Classes (OBC).

Meanwhile, Chief minister Eknath Shinde, who held a meeting of the cabinet sub-committee on reservation on Monday, appealed to Jarange-Patil and the protesters to end their protest. In efforts to restore peace in the state, he also announced that Kunbi caste certificates to the descendants of those recorded as part of the Kunbi sub-caste during the pre-independence Nizam era.