After the Maharashtra government offered Kunbi caste certificates to Marathas in Marathwada to avail of OBC benefits, protest leader Manoj Jarange refused to end his fast unto death and demanded an amendment in the genealogy clause in the government resolutions (GR) issued on Wednesday night. Jarange, who began his fast on August 29, rejected Chief Minister (CM) Eknath Shinde’s call to end his protest on Thursday.

Jarange asked the government to remove the condition that a Maratha family’s genealogy, which proved that its past generations were registered as Kunbi/Maratha-kunbi/Kunbi-Maratha in the erstwhile Nizam state, has to be the basis for granting the Kunbi caste certificate. Jarange has been fasting to get the Marathas in Marathwada the OBC concession and for the larger issue of the restoration of quota in jobs and education. The quota was scrapped by the Supreme Court in 2021 for breaching the 50 per cent cap on social reservations and over the state government’s lack of due diligence to establish the community’s backwardness.