BOMBAY, 20 May 2006 — In a major political embarrassment to the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leadership, former revenue minister of Maharashtra, Shalinitai Patil, has offered to lead an agitation to oppose plans to increase reserved seats for backward communities in educational institutions.
Addressing a press conference in Satara, Patil said reservations based on caste had created large-scale dissensions and added that she would not hesitate to lead the agitation against reservations if she was approached by student leaders.
Patil asserted that the agitation against reservations which was presently confined to the metropolitan cities would soon spread to different parts of the country and said that she supported reservations based on economic criteria.
A spokesman of the NCP said the statement by Patil was her personal view and not of the party. However, she has been reprimanded and asked to refrain from drawing the party into the issue, he added.
Meanwhile in Bombay, the police Thursday night arrested Ashok Khot, the additional chief secretary of the Maharashtra government at the Santa Cruz airport as he landed from Delhi. The state government haddeclared Khot a “proclaimed offender” on Wednesday.
A defiant Khot told journalists at the airport that he himself had surrendered at the airport.
He denied that the police had arrested him. Angry and displeased with the state government for declaring him an absconder, Khot said the government’s declaration was an act of injustice to him. “I am not a criminal as made out by the government and will resign from the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) very soon,” Khot said.
