The Maharashtra government is in favour of the Maratha quota, Chief Minister Eknath Shinde said today after an all-party meeting called by his government to discuss the fresh wave of statewide protests.

Marathas should observe restraint as the government needs time for legal modalities to implement the reservation, the Chief Minister said, urging pro-quota activist Manoj Jarange Patil to cooperate with his government.

Mr Patil, who has been on an indefinite hunger strike since October 25, told NDTV this morning that they are demanding inclusion under the Kunbi caste, and not any separate quota. Marathas belong to the Kunbi caste, which comes under Other Backward Classes (OBC) category, he asserted.

The Shinde government had formed a committee led by a retired judge to look into this. The committee has said in its report that after examining the documents of a lakh people, about 11,530 Marathas were found to have documents of being Kunbi.

In a major boost to Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) ahead of Telangana assembly elections, former minister Nagam Janardhan Reddy, former MLA Vishnuvardhan Reddy, Kolhapur leader Rampulla Reddy, Karimnagar leader Kota Jaipal Reddy and other Congress leaders joined the ruling party in the presence of party president and Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao (KCR).

The senior Congress leaders were welcomed to BRS by Chief Minister KCR in an event held at Telangana Bhavan in Hyderabad on Tuesday.

While addressing the event, Chief Minister KCR said, “Nagam Janardhan Reddy was active in the Telangana movement of 1969. He also went to jail. With Nagam Janardhan joining, our strength doubled. It is certain that we will win fourteen seats in Palamuru.”

“Vishnuvardhan Reddy is my responsibility for a good political future. PJR is my best friend, his son Vishnu is like a member of my family. I request Vishnu and MLA Mahanti Gopinath to work together,” he added.

He also slammed the opposition in Telangana accusing them of “bad politics” and said that the elections will be a “slap on their faces”.

“Telangana is moving forward with tremendous progress, per capita income has increased. 24-hour electricity is not available anywhere else in the country. The opposition parties are doing bad politics because they can’t bear to see the development, yesterday they attacked Kotha MP Prabhakar Reddy. Prabhakar Reddy survived by the grace of God. This kind of attack cannot be tolerated. We have to be careful and win the elections which will be a slap on their faces, let’s all move forward unitedly,” the BRS chief said.

Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) MP, Kotha Prabhakar Reddy, was stabbed in the stomach by an unidentified person during his campaign in Siddipet on Monday, said Siddipet police. Reddy is a BRS candidate from the Dubbak assembly.

Prabhakar Reddy was attacked in Surampally village of the Daulatabad mandal.

The counting of votes for Telangana, along with those of four other poll-bound states, is scheduled for December 3.

The state is set to witness an intriguing triangular contest between the ruling BRS, Congress, and the BJP.

In the previous Assembly elections in 2018, the BRS won 88 of the 119 seats, hogging 47.4 per cent of the total vote share.

The Congress finished a distant second with 19 seats and a vote share of 28.7 per cent.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bangladeshi counterpart Sheikh Hasina today jointly inaugurated three projects via virtual mode, including a key rail link between Tripura’s Nischintapur and Gangasagar in the neighbouring country.

The other two projects inaugurated by PM Modi and Sheikh Hasina are the 65-km Khulna-Mongla Port Rail Line, and Unit 2 of the Maitree Super Thermal Power Plant in Bangladesh’s Rampal.

The 15-km Agartala-Akhaura Cross Border Rail Link is expected to boost cross-border trade and significantly reduce the travel time between Agartala and Kolkata via Dhaka.

“It is a matter of joy that we have connected once again to celebrate the success of the India-Bangladesh cooperation,” PM Modi said in an interaction with Sheikh Hasina over video-conferencing.

“In the past nine years, the work we have done together has not happened in decades,” he said.