Mahayuti fails to take decision on Dhangar reservation

MUMBAI: The Mahayuti government on Friday failed to take any decision on including the Dhangar community in the Scheduled Tribes (ST) category, following which community outfits have threatened to resume their agitation. Gopichand Padalkar, a Dhangar community leader from the BJP, announced that there would be a statewide Rasta Roko on Monday.
As prime minister Narendra Modi was on a Maharashtra tour on Friday, chief minister Eknath Shinde asked his close aide, excise minister Shambhuraj Desai, to meet the delegations of the three communities and listen to their demands. Accordingly, Desai held the meeting on Friday.
As the decision to give ST reservation to the Dhangar community has legal complications, there was no concrete decision on it in the meeting. Desai attempted to pacify community leaders by accepting their other demands, such as an extension to the nine-member Sudhakar Shinde committee on Dhangar reservation. He also said he would initiate legal steps to take back certificates wrongly issued to some as ‘Dhangads’.
In Maharashtra, the Dhangars come under the Nomadic Tribes category within the larger Other Backward Classes category. On the other hand, Dhangads, also known as Oraon, Dhanka and Dom, are listed as Scheduled Tribes in other parts of the country. For years, the Dhangar community from Maharashtra has been claiming that Dhangad and Dhangar are the same and they should be included in the ST category.
In the case of the Matang community’s demands, Desai approved the proposal of the Sakal Matang Samaj to appoint a commission under a retired judge to look into the issue of sub-classification in the Supreme Court reservation for the community. In August, an SC bench headed by Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud had permitted states to create sub-classifications within the SC and ST categories for the purpose of protecting, through fixed sub-quotas, the most backward communities within these categories.
After the meeting, Desai said that a meeting of the cabinet sub-committee on Maratha reservation would be called on Monday. “After the cabinet meeting, a meeting of the cabinet sub-committee on Maratha reservation will be held with the advisory board of experts,” he said. “I will also update chief minister Eknath Shinde and both deputy chief ministers about the issues discussed in today’s meeting.”