New Delhi/Ahmedabad, August 30: The agitation for quotas for Patels in government jobs will be expanded to other states and include castes like Kurmis and Gujjars, Hardik Patel, who led the stir that plunged Gujarat into violence said Sunday.
‘‘Whatever has happened in Gujarat, we want to take it to the national level and there are people in 12 states who are connected to us,’’ 22-year-old Patel, leader of Patidar community, which wants to muscle its way to the quota list, told journalists in Delhi.
Patel, who met some leaders of Kurmi, Koeri and Gujjar communities with whom he said the Patidars of Gujarat had kinship, said the agitation for reservation was ‘‘a marathon and not a 100-metre race’’, which had to be run over a couple of years.
Kurmis and Koeris, about whom Patel talked, figure in reservation list in key Hindi heartland states like Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, which also has Gujjars in that category.
The firebrand young leader, whose photographs brandishing a gun had been published in some national dailies, had led a massive rally of his castemen in Ahmedabad August 25 seeking quotas for them. His detention was followed by violence which claimed 10 lives, including that of a police constable, forcing the deployment of the Army. PTI
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