State forms committee to explore ways to include Dhangars in ST list
The nine-member committee, led by IRS officer Sudhakar Shinde, will have four non-governmental members and will submit its report within three months.
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File photo of march by Yashwant Sena demanding reservation for the Dhangar community. (Express photo by Ganesh Shirsekar) In a bid to pacify the agitating Dhangar community, which is demanding Scheduled Tribe (ST) status, the Maharashtra government has formed a nine-member committee that will travel to Madhya Pradesh, Bihar and Telangana to study the methodology adopted for the inclusion of other castes in the ST category.
The nine-member committee, led by IRS officer Sudhakar Shinde, will have four non-governmental members and will submit its report within three months.
The committee will visit the departments concerned in the three states to study the methodology used to include new castes in the ST category. It will also study the provisions in the law used for the same and collect the necessary documents as well as the details of the court cases, if any.
The committee will also held discussions with the representatives of castes, which are not part of the ST category to understand how they handled the issue.
On September 21, 2023, the Maharashtra government held a meeting with the delegation of the Dhangar community where Chief Minister Eknath Shinde had directed to study the model adopted by these three states for the inclusion of new castes in the ST category. Based on that the committee has now been formed.
Dr Sanjay Dabhade, state committee member of National Forum for Tribal Rights, said that a similar excercise was undertaken by the Tribal Training and Research Institute (TRTI) few years ago and it served no purpose.
“Constitutionally, every state has its own schedule whereby a list of tribes eligible for reservation is mentioned. We have 45 tribes and on number 36, Oraon, Dhangad, is mentioned. What it means is, Oraon is the main tribe and Dhangad is its regional name. Maharashtra’s Dhangars claim that Dhangad is a spelling error, whereby they claim that the entry on number 36 is for them,” said Dabhade.
He added that for inclusion within ST, merely accepting spelling mistake won’t help as Dhangars will have to prove that they belong to Oraon tribe. “This cannot happen because they are not Scheduled Tribes and therefore any number of visits to any state in the country will not help their cause,” he said.
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