Jalna (Maharashtra), Sep 21 (IANS): The health of Shivba Sanghatana leader Manoj Jarange-Patil started deteriorating on the fifth day of his sixth hunger strike here on Saturday, his party leaders said.

Since Friday noon he was feeling exhausted and sickly, and his supporters were concerned to see him lying restlessly on his stomach or not communicating with them.

Last evening, at one point, Jarange-Patil got up to address his people, but his legs didn’t seem to support his weight and he suddenly fell into a heap, appearing to be motionless.

However, his aides who were around managed to catch him in time and prevented him from falling down and hurting himself.

They helped him sit upright again and after that he again took some rest at the hunger strike venue.

From Friday night, many of his alarmed followers, some with tears in their eyes and many women seen weeping, made frantic appeals to Jarange-Patil to break his hunger strike, or at least get some medication to revive him, but he remained adamant.

Later, state Minister Shambhuraj Desai called up Jarange-Patil with the same plea, plus many of his close aides repeatedly goaded him to get treated for his frail health, and he reluctantly agreed to do so in the wee hours of Saturday.

A medical team present at the spot immediately administered him with saline and certain medicines, which he has started taking, while going a little easy on the agitation since Saturday morning.

As the hunger-strike gets longer and the date of Maharashtra Assembly elections looms closer, Maratha groups have issued calls for a shutdown (bandh) in Beed and Osmanabad districts to express solidarity with Jarange-Pail.

The Maratha leader started his long agitation for quotas for the community in August 2023, and the latest decisive phase – which he termed as his ‘last’ hunger strike and a ‘final opportunity’ to the Mahayuti government before the Assembly polls – kicked off from September 17 at his village Antarvali-Sarati in Jalna district.

His demands are the implementation of the ‘sage-soyare (family bloodline)’ notification, giving Marathas reservation from the OBC quotas, a government notification stating that Marathas and Kunbis are the same, plus other related demands including withdrawal of police cases filed against the Marathas for taking part in the quotas campaign.