NCP MLA Prakash Solanke extends support to Dhangar reservation demand

Solanke, a 70-year-old from the Maratha community, is a five-term MLA from Majalgaon assembly constituency

MUMBAI: After Dhananjay Munde, another NCP MLA and former minister, Prakash Solanke, wrote to chief minister Devendra Fadnavis urging him towards the reservation demands of the Dhangar community. Dhangars are backward and have been persistently making the same demand for the last seven years, this is their right, Solanke said in his letter.

Prakash Solanke

The one-page letter was sent to CM Fadnavis on Saturday. A copy of the letter is with the Hindustan Times.

The development comes against the backdrop of the Dhangar community reviving their long-pending demand to get the status of the Scheduled Tribes (ST) category. The call for reservations soon after the state government accepted the Hyderabad Gazette as a valid document to prove the credentials of the Maratha community as Kunbi, enabling them to get the benefits of the Other Backwards Classes (OBC) community.

The community has been demanding inclusion in the ST category for the past several years. The Dhangars, who are traditionally occupied as shepherds, get 3.5% reservation as part of the Nomadic Tribe (C) category, which is recognised in the state but not at the centre. If their demands are met, their inclusion will be increased to 7%, and the ST community have been strongly opposing this move. At present, Deepak Borhade, of the Sakal Dhangar Samaj, has been on an indefinite hunger strike for the past four days in Jalna. The community has also intensified their agitations, he informed.

“The Dhangar community is socially, educationally, and economically backward, and therefore their demand is both rightful and urgent. Implementation of the reservation will open the path of progress for the community. Considering this long-standing demand, particularly in Beed district as well as across the state, I earnestly request your personal intervention and an immediate positive decision in the interest of the community,” Solanke wrote.

Solanke, a 70-year-old from the Maratha community, is a five-term MLA from Majalgaon assembly constituency. He shifted his loyalty to Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar after the party split in July 2023.

In the run-up to the 2014 state assembly elections, Fadnavis, the then Maharashtra BJP president, promised the Dhangar community that he would provide reservation in the first cabinet meeting after coming to power. Instead, his government appointed the Tata Institute of Social Studies (TISS) to study the backwardness of the community and check if Dhangars in the state are the same as ‘Dhangads,’ who are under the ST category. Dhangars have been maintaining that this is a typographical error and they are same as ‘Dhangads’. In 2017, TISS submitted its report to the state, reportedly saying that the two communities have no similarities.

On September 12, Munde wrote to CM Fadnavis, supporting the demand of the Banjara community to be included in the ST category. Their demand, too, began when the state government issued a GR accepting the Hyderabad Gazette for the Maratha quota. Banjaras claim that the same Hyderabad Gazette considers them as ST, and based on that, they are getting ST reservation benefits in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh.