HC rejects petitions seeking ST status for Dhangar community

The Bombay high court dismissed petitions seeking ST status for the Dhangar community, stating that it lacked merits.

MUMBAI: The Bombay high court on Friday dismissed petitions seeking Scheduled Tribe (ST) status for the Dhangar (shepherd) community, which enjoys 3.5% reservation as a Nomadic Tribe, against the 7% reservation for the STs, stating that it ‘lacked merits.’

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A division bench of justice Gautam Patel and justice Kamal Khata dismissed petitions filed by Maharani Ahilyadevi Samaj Prabodhan Manch, a representative body, and several individuals, seeking directions to the central authorities concerned to decide their representations for substituting the term ‘Dhangad’ appearing in the list of Scheduled Tribes for Maharashtra for ‘Dhangar.’

The petitioners claimed that there was no community called ‘Dhangad’ in Maharashtra and the term has erroneously crept in the Presidential Orders (PO) of 1950, 1956 and 1976 for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes and therefore, the non-existing community should be corrected to ‘Dhangar,’ a community which accounts for around 9% of the state’s population.

They contended that while the ethnology and sociology of the Dhangar community have been clearly defined and established by ethnographers and sociologists and date to the 1881 Census, the ‘Dhangad’ tribe finds no mention anywhere in the records pertaining to Maharashtra, and therefore, their claim was required to be examined by the constitutional authorities. They said they had to approach the high court as scores of their representations for the correction remained undecided from 1987.

Adivasi Samaj Kriti Samiti, a representative body of tribals, had strenuously opposed the petitions. Their counsel, advocate Uday Warunjikar, pointed out the settled legal position that the entries in the PO cannot be corrected or replaced as sought by the Dhangar community.

In support of his contention, Dr Warunjikar relied on the Supreme Court’s 1965 verdict in Basavlingappa’s case, in which the apex court held that the Presidential Orders specifically mention different names of a community if it is known by more than one name. He, therefore, argued that in view of this, it could not be presumed that there was a ‘typographical error’ in enlisting ‘Dhangad’ community instead of ‘Dhangar’ from Maharashtra.