Starting from May 5, 2026, Karl Marx Birth Anniversary, to 12 May, six massive rallies under the leadership of the AIKS, with the participation of more than 31,000 peasant women and men, marched to the respective Sub Divisional Offices (SDO) of Dahanu, Bhiwandi, Wada, Jawhar, Vasai and Palghar, and submitted thousands of land-related claims.

The tehsil-wise participation in these six rallies comprising peasants from 10 tehsils of Thane-Palghar district was as follows: 1. Dahanu and Talasari – 15,000, 2. Wada and Vikramgad – 5,000, 3. Jawhar and Mokhada – 5,000, 4. Shahapur and Bhiwandi – 3,000, 5. Vasai – 1,500, 6. Palghar – 1,500. These daily rallies were held in scorching heat of 41 to 43 degrees centigrade!

It may be mentioned that all these rallies began on the very next day after May 4, the date on which the shocking results of the five state assembly elections were declared. Thus, they represented the defiant resistance of the Red Flag to all adversities.  

All the six rallies included thousands of women and youth. Along with the AIKS, the CITU, AIDWA, DYFI, SFI, and AARM also actively mobilised for these rallies.

Follow-up of Historic Victories

As a result of the historic AIKS-led Palghar, Nashik, and Akole Long Marches in January-February 2026, which mobilised a total of over one lakh peasants, the District Collectors and later the State Government itself were forced to give in writing that all land-related claims, including those under the Forest Rights Act (FRA), old landlords’ lands, temple and inami lands, house-site lands etc would be freshly re-examined, and these land rights would be vested in the names of the cultivating peasants. This was a major victory.

As a follow-up, a massive campaign was conducted by the AIKS in Thane-Palghar districts to fill in thousands of fresh land-related claims. All of them were submitted to the various SDOs by the six rallies, and official receipts were taken for all the land claims submitted. The SDOs agreed to re-examine all the claims on a war footing and grant land rights at the very earliest. 

Several other burning local issues of the people as regards water, irrigation, electricity, employment, education, ration, roads etc were raised by each of the delegations. The SDO gave concrete and time-bound assurances on most of them. The decision of the central government to slash the number of PESA mobiliser women from 3,000 to 1,000 in  Maharashtra was strongly condemned in this rally. 

These rallies were led by AIKS National President Dr Ashok Dhawale, AIDWA National Vice President Mariam Dhawale, CITU State Secretary Vinod Nikole, MLA, AIKS State Office Bearers Kiran Gahala, Radka Kalangda, Chandrakant Ghorkhana, Chandu Dhangda, AIKS District leaders Yashwant Ghatal, Amrut Bhawar, Ganesh Dumada, Krishna Bhawar, Prakash Choudhari, Manoj Madha, Vijay Katela, CITU District President Laxman Dombre, AIDWA State Office Bearers Prachi Hatiwlekar, Lahani Dauda, and Sunita Shingda, DYFI state leaders Bharat Walamba, Nandu Hadal, Rajesh Dalvi, SFI state leaders Bhaskar Mhase, Virendra Dumada, Geeta Dauda, and many others. 

While addressing the rallies, the leaders came down heavily on the RSS-BJP and their regimes in the state and the centre in the background of the recent assembly election results.

Campaign on Shivaji and its Background

Around the time of the above rallies, Shiv Sena (Shinde faction) MLA Sanjay Gaikwad made abusive remarks and gave death threats to the publisher of a popular book ‘Who Was Shivaji?’, written in 1988 by martyr Comrade Govind Pansare. Mahatma Jotirao Phule had rightly hailed Shivaji as the ‘King of the Peasantry’. This book by Govind Pansare places an objective pro-people and secular history of Shivaji. Over five lakh copies of this book have been sold in Maharashtra, and it has sold very well in other national languages too. LeftWord Books has brought out its English edition translated by AIKS State Vice President Dr Uday Narkar.

At around this same time, one Bageshwar Baba (Dhirendra Krishna Shastri) delivered a lecture in Nagpur in which he made utterly false statements about Shivaji. The equally condemnable part was that this lecture was attended by RSS Chief Mohan Bhagwat, Union Minister Nitin Gadkari, and Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, but none of them raised any objection to these canards spread by the Bageshwar Baba.

It was in this background that a call was given to observe a week as ‘Shiv Vichar Jagar Saptah’. As part of this campaign, 1,000 copies of the book ‘Who Was Shivaji?’ were sold in the above rallies. Along with this, 15,000 copies of the AIKS Palghar Long March Special Issue of the progressive weekly ‘Jeevanmarg’, were sold. The total sale was worth over two lakh rupees.