Court draws a hard line on protests during Mumbai’s festive week

The Bombay High Court has put guardrails around activist Manoj Jarange Patil’s latest agitation in Mumbai, saying he and his supporters must take police permission and use designated locations, not occupy public space at will. The timing was the clincher: his call to bring thousands from Jalna to Azad Maidan for an indefinite fast landed right as Mumbai geared up for Ganpati festivities, a period when the city’s police and civic staff are stretched thin.

A bench of Chief Justice Alok Aradhe and Justice Sandeep Marne issued notice to Jarange Patil and stressed a familiar constitutional balance: the right to peaceful protest stands, but it comes with conditions—appropriate venues, reasonable time, and prior authorization. In court’s words and tone, democracy and dissent go together, but disruption during a high-security festival week cannot be brushed aside.

Permission isn’t a formality here. The bench flagged public safety, traffic control, and emergency access during a citywide celebration that draws mammoth crowds and hundreds of processions. The state was allowed to suggest alternative sites—including options outside the core city—while the court underscored that any assembly must comply with the newly notified Public Meetings, Agitations and Processions Rules, 2025.

The legal push came via a public interest litigation from Amy Foundation, an NGO that argued an unpermitted, large-scale sit-in at Azad Maidan would choke movement, stretch policing, and inconvenience citizens when the city is at peak footfall. The bench has set September 9 as the next date to check compliance and take stock of the situation on the ground.

Even as the order landed, Jarange Patil refused to blink. He moved into Azad Maidan and began an indefinite hunger strike alongside a sea of supporters. His message was blunt: he won’t leave Mumbai until his demands are met. He accused the government of playing for time and said “extensions” for protests are meaningless without a decision on the core issue he’s chasing.

On the political side, the state leadership said a cabinet sub-committee is working on the demands within the constitutional framework. The government’s line is that it wants a durable fix—one that doesn’t pit Marathas against Other Backward Classes (OBC) and can hold up in court. Officials pointed out that a 10 percent quota for Marathas in education and jobs was enacted last year and remains in force, even as new legal scrutiny is anticipated.

The court also gave the state liberty to offer venues like Kharghar for mass gatherings, a signal that Mumbai’s historic protest ground, Azad Maidan, isn’t a blanket free-for-all—especially during sensitive periods. Police, for their part, are likely to weigh crowd size, duration, medical preparedness, and traffic diversions before clearing any fresh site.

The fight behind the fight: what’s at stake in the Maratha quota demand

Jarange Patil isn’t new to confrontation. Over the past two years, his rallies and fasts have brought the Maratha reservation issue back to centerstage. His main ask this time is straightforward but explosive: recognize all Marathas as Kunbis, an agrarian community listed under OBC. That door, once opened wide, would make a large and politically influential community eligible for OBC benefits across education and government jobs.

Why Kunbi? The state has been combing archival records, including old revenue papers from regions that were once under the Nizam, to identify Maratha families recorded as Kunbi. Government resolutions have allowed blood relatives of individuals with verified Kunbi entries to apply for certificates. For families that can produce those documents, the OBC path exists. Jarange wants that window widened so that the broader community can access it without the slow, document-by-document grind.

OBC organizations see a red line. Their fear is dilution—if Marathas, who are estimated to constitute roughly a third of Maharashtra’s population, slide into the OBC pool, competition for a fixed pie gets brutal. Many groups have pressed the state to create a separate category, rather than reallocate OBC benefits. That’s where courts and commissions come in, because any move has to respect constitutional caps, empirical data on backwardness, and the Supreme Court’s past directions.

Here’s the legal backdrop in brief:

• 2018: Maharashtra passed a law creating a separate Socially and Educationally Backward Class (SEBC) quota for Marathas.
• 2019: The Bombay High Court upheld the law with modifications, trimming the quota percentage but allowing reservation.
• 2021: The Supreme Court struck down the SEBC quota for Marathas, citing the 50 percent cap on reservations and the lack of extraordinary circumstances necessary to breach it.
• 2024: The state brought a fresh 10 percent quota for Marathas, relying on new commission findings. Legal challenges were widely expected.

This zig-zag has left the issue on a knife-edge. The state insists it’s trying to craft a solution that can survive judicial review, while activists say delay is the strategy and the community’s youth can’t wait through another round of reports, hearings, and appeals.

The court’s latest message on protests sits on another body of law. Article 19 of the Constitution gives citizens the right to assemble peacefully, but it also allows reasonable restrictions for public order. The Supreme Court’s 2020 judgment on the Shaheen Bagh sit-in made a clear point: public roads can’t be occupied indefinitely. An earlier 2018 ruling on protests at Jantar Mantar also stressed that authorities must balance free expression with the rights of others—residents, commuters, businesses—to carry on with their lives.

That’s exactly what the Bombay High Court is doing now, and the new Public Meetings, Agitations and Processions Rules, 2025 are the toolkit. Expect requirements like advance permission, crowd estimates, medical and sanitation plans, time limits, noise controls, and conditions on route, barricading, and emergency access. Police can impose restrictions or shift venues if they foresee law-and-order risks.

Why the fuss around Ganpati? Because Mumbai becomes a different city for those days. Lakhs of devotees move across neighborhoods, traffic is often rerouted, and processions snake through crowded arteries late into the night. Police deploy heavily, civic crews keep a constant watch, and hospitals are on alert. In that scenario, an unpermitted, open-ended protest in the heart of South Mumbai is a risk nobody wants to gamble on.

For Jarange’s camp, the counter-argument is moral urgency. They say the state has had years to find a durable solution and that public pressure is the only lever that forces timelines. His supporters point to job competition and college admissions where, they argue, Maratha youth lose out without affirmative action. For families who’ve tracked this fight since the first big agitations in the mid-2010s, patience is thin.

Politically, the stakes are high. Every major party in Maharashtra courts Maratha voters, especially in the sugar belt and cooperative sectors. The government warns the opposition against inflaming tensions between Marathas and OBCs. The opposition accuses the government of event management over policymaking. Each side knows the optics—who looks like a problem-solver, who looks obstructionist—matter as much as the legal fine print.

On the ground, the next few days are about enforcement and negotiation. If Jarange sticks to Azad Maidan without a permit, the court could push the police to act or ask the state to prove what steps it took to offer alternatives. If a compromise site like Kharghar is accepted with conditions, the protest may continue with less friction. Either way, the September 9 hearing will ask a simple question: did everyone follow the rules?

Meanwhile, the core question remains unresolved: can the state craft a pathway that gives Marathas tangible benefits without running afoul of the Supreme Court’s 50 percent cap and without eating into OBC reservations? One route is the documentation-heavy Kunbi certification drive that filters eligibility through old records. Another is a separate category backed by fresh data showing social and educational backwardness significant enough to justify deviation. Both are politically explosive and legally complex.

Numbers illustrate the bind. The Maratha community is widely estimated at around a third of the state’s population. OBC communities together have a 27 percent reservation in Maharashtra, spread across dozens of castes with their own histories of deprivation and mobilization. Move one piece of that puzzle, and the entire reservation matrix shifts.

For Mumbai residents, there’s the immediate question of daily life—traffic diversions, crowd management near protest sites, and the smooth conduct of Ganpati processions. Police usually issue advisories on routes, immersion days, and sensitive zones. Add a mass protest into that mix and the city’s finely balanced festival logistics can wobble.

For students and job-seekers watching this closely, the uncertainty is draining. Coaching centers advise hedging—apply in unreserved categories, keep documentation ready in case policy shifts, and watch for government resolutions that tweak eligibility rules. Employers, especially in the public sector, brace for litigation-driven delays in recruitment cycles whenever reservation policies change or get challenged.

What happens next will hinge on three moving parts: the court’s tolerance for non-compliance with permit rules, the government’s ability to offer a defensible policy timeline, and Jarange’s appetite for escalation. If the state can show measurable steps—like verifying a big tranche of Kunbi documents, or tabling a refined framework—it can claim progress. If it stalls, the agitation will likely grow, given the resonance of the cause in rural and peri-urban Maharashtra.

There’s also the social angle. OBC groups aren’t passive bystanders. Several have warned that rolling Marathas into OBC without tight criteria would prompt counter-mobilization and legal challenges. That’s the flashpoint the government says it wants to avoid by consulting across communities and anchoring any change in data that courts can trust.

Strip away the noise, and this is the equation: a large community pressing for recognition, another set of communities guarding hard-earned quotas, a state trying to craft a legally sound path, and courts insisting that protests respect the city’s rhythms and rules. The High Court’s order doesn’t shut the door on agitation; it tries to keep the city running while the bigger fight—the one over Maratha reservation—plays out where it ultimately will: in meeting rooms, commissions, and courtrooms.