Shiv Sena (UBT) chief Uddhav Thackeray on Tuesday said the state lacks the power to remove the 50% cap on reservations, asserting that only the Centre has the authority to raise the ceiling limit through Parliament.

Thackeray slammed the Eknath Shinde-led government over the vexed Maratha reservation issue and demanded deliberations with various sections to find a solution through mutual understanding instead of holding discussions only with politicians.

“The state does not have the right to increase the limit of reservations. It can be resolved in Lok Sabha. My MPs will back it (if any law is proposed to increase the 50% cap),” the former chief minister told reporters.

“Everyone must go to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and he should decide (on resolving the reservation issue). Whatever it is (the decision), we will accept it,” he said. Thackeray said the ruling party must clarify whether it wants to hurt the (interests of) Other Backward Classes, citing the High Court’s stay on the Bihar government’s decision to raise quotas to 65 per cent.

The former chief minister said Marathas won’t get justice till incumbent rulers (Shiv Sena led by Shinde, BJP, and NCP headed by Ajit Pawar) continue to be at the helm of affairs.

Thackeray said the former ally (BJP) has changed and become “brutal”.

“This brutal tendency must be destroyed in Maharashtra and the country,” he said while responding to a query on allegations raised by former state home minister and NCP (SP) leader Anil Deshmukh against Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis.

Deshmukh had claimed an “intermediary” had visited him when he was the home minister in the previous MVA government on behalf of Fadnavis, who was the opposition leader, with affidavits implicating then CM Uddhav Thackeray and ministers Aaditya Thackeray, Ajit Pawar and Anil Parab.

Fadnavis has denied these charges.

Thackeray called for rehabilitating residents of Dharavi slum sprawl, undergoing redevelopment, in the same locality and not elsewhere in the city.