In contrast to the fury and chaos of the recent Maratha quota protests, a day-long, State-wide agitation on Monday called by the Dhangar (shepherd) community demanding inclusion into the list of Scheduled Tribes (STs) passed off without incident.
Barring traffic snarls at several places in Nagpur, Marathwada and parts of north Maharashtra, the agitation was largely peaceful, said police sources.
However, Dhangar community leaders across the State warned of intensifying the agitation in the first week of September unless the Devendra Fadnavis government took a concrete step to resolve the long-pending issue. The agitation, under the banner of the Dhangar Sangharsh Samiti Maharashtra Rajya, received an enthusiastic response in Aurangabad, Nagpur, Solapur, Nanded and Jalgaon.
“The Chief Minister has been putting us off with assurances. A meeting with him was held on August 10 and while the discussions were positive, he failed to clarify in how many days the State government would award the ST reservation to the community,” said Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s Rajya Sabha MP, Dr. Vikas Mahatme, who staged a ‘chakka jam’ in Nagpur with several protestors. Dr. Mahatme, an ophthalmologist and Padma Shri recipient, had spearheaded the agitation before the BJP came to power in 2014. He, along with 25 agitators, was briefly detained by the Nagpur police.
In Sangli’s Atpadi Taluk, bus services were suspended in the wake of the agitation, while in Kolhapur, a meeting of Dhangar community leaders condemned the BJP government for hoodwinking the community with false promises. “Since 2015, the BJP-ruled government has been assuring us of granting reservation. But after four years in power, they seem to have no intention in fulfilling their pre-election promise,” said a leader at the meeting.
Earlier in the day, protesters burnt tyres and blocked the Jalna-Auranagabad road for several hours, holding up traffic. Likewise, the Nagpur-Wardha road was jammed for a while as agitators demonstrated with sheep and goats along the Ahmednagar-Manmad road.
In Jalgaon, peaceful protests commenced at several areas in the district.
Speaking in Ahmednagar, senior BJP leader Eknath Khadse, too, urged the State to expedite the process of including the Dhangar community in the ST list.
The community, currently included in the Vimukta Jati and Nomadic Tribes category, is seeking a higher quota in the ST list.
Dhangar leaders in Maharashtra contend that while their brethren, called ‘Dhangad’ in other parts of the country are availing of ST benefits, those in the State are denied these owing to a long-standing typographical error on the name.
On Sunday, a youth in Parbhani district had allegedly committed suicide over the delay in granting reservation to the community, which has demanded that the BJP government fulfil its poll promise to include them in the ST category.
Before the 2014 Assembly election, the BJP had lured some leaders from the community with promises of reservation. After the poll, it had inducted Mahadev Jankar, a prominent Dhangar leader and chief of the Rashtriya Samaj Paksha (RSP) and minor BJP ally, into the State cabinet as a sop to the community.
It had also commissioned the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) to make a study on the backwardness of the community.
Sharad Pawar’s Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) too had jumped into the fray to win the hearts and minds of the community by expressing support for the contentious Dhangar reservation issue.
Bharipa Bahujan Mahasangh (BBM) chief Prakash Ambedkar, too, held a rally in Pandharpur in May this year in a bid to reach out to the community.