Maratha quota stir: Azad Maidan turns into open-air campsite with drums, showers, and khichdi

From cooking on roads to bathing in fountains and dancing to halgi beats, thousands of Maratha protesters have transformed south Mumbai’s heritage zone into a campsite.

Mumbai: Thousands of Maratha community members have virtually turned the area surrounding the Azad Maidan in south Mumbai into a camp during their agitation for quota, with some of the protesters even taking bath in the open.

Many youngsters were on Saturday also seen dancing on the road to the beats of `halgi', a traditional drum.

While many of them had to cook their food on the road on Friday night, packets of cooked food, including khichdi, were distributed on Saturday. As the rains took a break, many more people were on the roads outside the iconic Victorian edifices of the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus (CSMT) and Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), bringing the traffic to a standstill on Saturday morning.

The road outside the Azad Maidan -- where activist Manoj Jarange has launched his indefinite fast for Maratha quota -- has been closed for traffic, with parked vehicles of his supporters lining both sides. Some of the protesters took bath in the open, using water from tankers arranged by the organisers or the BMC.

A group of seven to eight young men was on Saturday seen bathing in a fountain near the BMC building. The groups of protesters -- nearly all of them wearing saffron scarfs -- shouted slogans, asserting they would not leave until the community was granted reservation in government jobs and education.

Some protesters on Saturday reached the Jehangir Art Gallery, about one km away from the Azad Maidan, and shouted slogans. Many wandered off to visit local landmarks such as the Gateway of India and thronged eateries in the area.

In Navi Mumbai, where hundreds of vehicles carrying protesters have been parked, a group who claimed to be from Beed was seen heckling a young couple. The couple left the area immediately. Some groups of protesters also blocked the road outside the CSMT on Saturday morning, complaining the BMC made no arrangement of shelter, water and toilets for them.

Finally, Jarange appealed to them, over microphone from his protest site, to clear the road. According to police, some 45,000 protesters travelled to south Mumbai on Friday, and about 30,000 of them stayed back overnight. The protesters have arrived in the state capital from across Maharashtra -- a significant number of them from the eight districts of Marathwada -- in some 8,000 vehicles, as per police estimates.