All India Majlis e Ittihadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) MP Imtiaz Jaleel has declared to take a march to the Maharashtra Assembly in Nagpur during the winter session of the legislative assembly on Wednesday, 21st December 2022. This march will be taken to push various demands, including the 5% reservation for Muslims.
Imtiaz Jaleel, the state unit president of the All India Majalis-E-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) and an MP from Aurangabad, tweeted a picture of the march’s poster to share this information. The poster mentions that the AIMIM will take out a march on 21 December from Indora Ground in Nagpur to Vidhan Bhawan during the session of the Maharashtra legislature.
मैं नागपुर आऊंगा। आप भी शामिल हों। pic.twitter.com/8tfA8pHEgq
— Imtiaz Jaleel (@imtiaz_jaleel) December 15, 2022
The demands mentioned in the poster include 5% reservations for Muslims, saving Waqf properties, removing illegal encroachments from Waqf properties, a grant of Rs 1000 crores to Maulana Azad Economic Development Corporation, awarding ownership possession of slum plots to residents, economic help to weaver community working on handlooms and power looms.
How NCP-Congress-Shiv Sena’s MVA alliance had fanned the demand for Muslim reservations
It is notable that though AIMIM is demanding reservations for Muslims, this demand in Maharashtra was originally fanned by Shiv Sena and Congress. When the Maha Vikas Aghadi alliance formed a government in Maharashtra in 2019, the alliance partners started pressing to bring in reservations for Muslims in the state. In January 2020, a month after Uddhav Thackeray became the chief minister, several reports surfaced stating that the Maha Vikas Aghadi government is preparing to introduce reservations for Muslims in the state.
Then in February 2020, then Minority Affairs minister Nawab Malik said that the Uddhav Thackeray-led Maha Vikas Aghadi government will soon bring in an ordinance to extend the contentious 5 per cent reservations for Muslims across educational institutes in the state. He had then also assured the State Legislative Council of taking ‘appropriate action’ in this regard before the beginning of the subsequent academic year and the admissions process.
On 24th February 2021, a meeting of the Maharashtra Congress’ parliamentary committee passed a resolution in support of Muslim and Maratha reservations in the state. In March 2021, Samajwadi Party leader and MLA Abu Azmi demanded the then Maha Vikas Aghadi government to bring a resolution against CAA-NRC in the ongoing assembly session and has also asked the government to bring a law to provide 5% reservations to Muslims in the state.
This Muslim appeasement continued till June 2022 that is a few weeks before the Maha Vikas Aghadi government collapsed. In the Rajya Sabha elections that took place in June 2022, 2 MLAs of AIMIM extended their support to the candidate fielded by the alliance of Shiv Sena, Congress, and Nationalist Congress Party against various conditions. These conditions included reservations for Muslims, the development of Muslim-majority cities like Malegaon and Dhulia, an increase in income of the Maharashtra Waqf Board, and the appointment of a Muslim in the Maharashtra Public Service Commission (MPSC).
